Roger O'Donnell

From a Synth History article written by Roger O'Donnell:

I had been in discussion with the people at Korg about a sponsorship deal, but it wasn’t going anywhere. We arrived in NYC in 1989 to start the US leg of the Prayer tour and we were to play the MTV Awards show in LA, live. Miraculously, when Kong found out, a brand new M1 arrived in my hotel room within about 30 minutes.

I believe the M1 is the most popular, in terms of sales, instrument ever made, 250,000 units. It was a sample player, they were called romplers. The samples were hard loaded in ROM memory - you couldn’t sample into it and you couldn’t really edit it - but the samples were of such an incredibly high standard you didn’t need to. It was also a workstation, so you could program songs into it, which is something I've never done. It also had onboard effects, which really was the start of a whole new wave of instruments. I loved the fretless bass and used it on many recordings. I also used it on some Cure recordings, specifically the session for the Arista anniversary record, and our versions of “Hello, I Love You” by The Doors. I had it onstage during the remaining Prayer tour shows but I don’t think I played it much.

Roger O'Donnell utilized the Roland XP-50, as documented on Wikicure.

I have used Kurzweil's for close to 20 years and I don't even think about using anything else. The sound, the action, the reliability are incomparable. I recently programmed the entire Cure back catalogue using only a PC3K8! Outstanding library of sounds... In those 20 years on tour I have never had a keyboard go down and thats pretty spectacular!

The picture shows O'Donnell on stage with a Yamaha Motif XF6.

An M-Audio Oxygen 8 V2 can be seen in Roger O'Donnell's studio, just to his left.

"Robert really likes the [Roland] MKS-20 piano module, so I've stuck with that. I've got some Prophet and Ell piano samples, but piano samples never seem to work live. I do actually use a piano sample for one of the old Cure songs, 'All Cats Are Gray' [from Faith], which has this really heavy single-note piano line at the end. For that part, I use a Prophet sample, which is quite powerful in the low range. The problem, of course, is that it's so difficult to get a piano sample that sounds real across the keyboard."

Roger O'Donnell includes the Hohner Pianet in his list of keyboards on his official website.

this is listed 3rd down in roger keyboards list

"The characteristic sound of the album is the orchestral string sample I got from Doctor Sounds in New York for my [Sequential] Prophet 2000."

Roger O'Donnell's keyboard rig for the Cure's Swing Tour '96 consisted of "Apple Powerbook 5200CS (plus CD-ROM drive); Furman power supply; Emu E4K keyboard sampler; Emu EIV rack sampler (with Emu CD-ROM library); Emu Proteus synthesiser; Emu UltraProteus synthesiser; Kurzweil PC88 master keyboard; MOTU MIDI Time Piece II; Roland XP50 synthesiser; Yamaha ProMix 01 mixer; Zip Drive."

"The heart of my rack is an Emu EIV. I wanted something that had enough memory to store data for all the songs, so I wouldn't be waiting if Robert decided to change the order. It meant resampling every old sound and storing it on there, That added up to between 72 and 100Mb. I use an Emu Proteus - specially for the stereo piano preset - and an UltraProteus for basic sounds. I have a MOTU MIDI Time Piece II, and use an Apple Powerbook to make editing and routing of the Time Piece easier.

"I also use the Mac, with Alchemy editing software, to juggle samples round in the EIV. I just send a stereo feed out, much to the dismay of house sound engineers, who usually want a feed pre-master level. I always run up against this, because they seem to think you're going to ride the master volume pedal, but I don't - I just need to fade out the tails of strings and stuff.

"I've just got the keyboard version of the EIV, the E4K. And Perry's going to play keyboards on a couple of songs, so we're both going to have E4Ks. It's a great keyboard for live use - they've really worked out the logistics of using a sampler in a live situation."

Roger O'Donnell's keyboard rig for the Cure's Swing Tour '96 consisted of "Apple Powerbook 5200CS (plus CD-ROM drive); Furman power supply; Emu E4K keyboard sampler; Emu EIV rack sampler (with Emu CD-ROM library); Emu Proteus synthesiser; Emu UltraProteus synthesiser; Kurzweil PC88 master keyboard; MOTU MIDI Time Piece II; Roland XP50 synthesiser; Yamaha ProMix 01 mixer; Zip Drive."

When it's Roger O'Donnell's turn to give the tech talk, Smith teasingly points to the cassette recorder and says, 'He's got a C-120.' 'It's not that bad,' counters O'Donnell. And it really isn't much of a laundry list: A Yamaha KX88 mother keyboard and a Roland JX-8P, the latter just in MIDI line. There's an Elker MIDI footpedal module - 'bass pedals, but I don't really play basslines,' says O'Donnell. 'it looks like that but I'm actually playing chords with the foot pedals. It's for the sake of accuracy, my boots are a bit too big [for basslines]' - and a MIDI rack which consists of a Prophet 2000 sampler, a Roland MKS-80 MIDI digital piano, an Ensoniq Mirage and three Oberheim DPX-1 sample players which handle a combination of Emulator II, Mirage and Prophet 2000 disks. Outboard effects are managed by two Roland DEP multi-effects, and everything gets sorted out through a Simmons eight-channel programmable mixer with a 99-memory circuit and a Roland MIDI-Merge MIDI patchbay. Don't forget the Boss volume pedal. He hears it all through a Meyer monitor.

Roger O'Donnell lists the Fender Rhodes Mark I Stage 73 among his keyboards on his official website.

Roger O'Donnell lists the Moog Micromoog as the fifth item in his keyboard section on his official website, indicating its use in his musical setup.

Roger O'Donnell lists the Sequential Circuits Prophet VS as the ninth item in his keyboards section on his official website.

listed 14th down in rogers keyboard list

Roger says in this interview that he has played a Sequential Circuits Pro One synthesizer.

"I use Synthogy Ivory for piano which is an amazing sample collection. I only ever use the Steinway though."

"I use Ableton Live for live looping and I use Mainstage for running live instruments. This all goes through a Macbook Pro an a MOTU Ultralite audio interface. I use Faderfox midi controllers which I love…"

"I use Logic in the studio and Ableton Live on stage; both are the best at what they do."

There were other string sound recipes on Disintegration as well. On "Prayers For Rain," for example, O'Donnell added a bit of Ensoniq Mirage cello/violin to the Prophet/Solina recipe, then further darkened the timbre with what sounds like some reversed piano samples.

"To me, 'Lovesong' had a real '60s feel," he explains. "So we used an [E-mu] Emulator II Vox organ sample from the [OMI] Universe Of Sounds CD. We ran it out into the studio through an amp to make it sound distorted, as if it was recorded in the '60s. And the organ sound on 'Untitled' is the harmonium sample from the same CD. At first we were going to use one of the church organ sounds, but that felt two pompous, too grand. The harmonium brings it down because it's a bit out of tune; it actually sounds as if it's being pumped with your feet. Somehow 'Untitled' creates an atmosphere of the Wild West."

And the massive textured synth on the opening cut,'Plainsong,' was originally created by Smith on his demo. "We worked together on that, but it's mainly Robert," O'Donnell acknowledges. "I played the guide keyboard, with Boris [Williams, drummer] in the studio, because it's difficult to play to a click. For the guide keyboard part, I played a solo violin line. Then I added the bass keyboard line, which was a very heavy MIDIed texture with about four sounds, including a Minimoog, which I was determined to get onto the album somewhere, a very deep cello, and lots of Solina. Robert held down one chord all the way through--a kind of block C thing that he's fond of, with all five fingers very close together. It always works, which constantly amazes me. There's also a single high C held down all the way through, which we brought in and out of the mix."

listed 4th down in rogers keyboard section

From a Synth History article written by Roger O'Donnell:

Early in 1983, Sequential Circuits, under the guidance of its guru, Dave Smith, whom I later became close friends with, released the Prophet 600, the first instrument with MIDI. A huge landmark for synthesizers, recording and even washing machines! I don’t think any of us realized at the time how important MIDI would become and how it would change our lives as musicians, we just saw it as a way of one keyboard being able to control another. Dave didn’t patent it, it was a gift to the world, one of those moments when the greater good was more important.

The 600 itself was like what the Micro was to the Minimoog, a paired down budget version. When the Prophet 5 first came out, it was about the same price as a small apartment in London, I think the 600 was around £1200? Sonically, it was great, the only downside was that the filter wasn’t as smooth as the 5, you could hear it step if you swept it. It was 6-note polyphonic, so you could play a nice sized chord. It had preset memories, a short un-clocked sequencer, which was a sort of musical notepad and one feature I really liked was a latch button. You could latch a chord and then play it with one finger.

This was the keyboard I used when I first joined the Thompson Twins. In fact, on the first tour of the US opening for The Police on the Synchronicity tour, I didn’t even have a flight case. It stayed in its original shipping box. I used this keyboard throughout my time with the Twins and then with the Furs through until 1987. I still have this one too.

listed 7th down in rogers keyboard list

Roger O'Donnell lists the Moog Minimoog Voyager as the tenth keyboard in his collection on his official website.

Roger O'Donnell lists the Moog Source among his keyboards on his official website, indicating its use in his music setup.

Roger O'Donnell lists the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 as the 13th item on his keyboard collection page, highlighting its role in his setup.