Favourite Keyboard Sound

I don’t know why I love the sound of an electric piano. I have never actually played one - just software emulations, which I don’t think really sound or feel the same. I suppose one of the reasons is that you don’t have to be a great player to luxuriate in the sound - just hold down a weird chord. I am no more a music historian than a player, but I first became aware of ‘that sound’ through Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book album. I got to know the sound of a rhodes piano at a time when it probably was about as trendy as my liking The Visitors by Abba, which by the way I still love immeasurably. Likewise, admiting a fondness for Trip Hop might make me seem stuck in the nineties but that’s where I probably got the urge to stick a Rhodes sound up against a drum machine to see what happens.

I’m constantly reaching for the sounds that got me interested in making music in the first place, and Portishead and Stevie Wonder are probably as good examples as any.

My preference is for a Fender Rhodes over a Wurlitzer any day. I like the chimey bell-like sound rather than Supertramp bark. Riders on the Storm, not the Logical Song.

If you still don’t know what sound I’m talking about here is a quick sample.

Electric Piano Sample Thing (192 kbps, 5MB Mp3)

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(Have a look at the Fender Rhodes Supersite for more information.)

Re-discovering Jackson Browne

I have forgotten about a lot of the seventies American Rock I used to listen to, like Jackson Browne and Stephen Stills. I like to think I was fairly discering - Neil Young, not America, The Eagles not R.E.O. Speedwagon, but maybe anyone who listens to Todd Rundgren doesn’t have any musical integrity, I don’t know.

I have realised, listening to ‘Late for the Sky’ that Jackson Browne is one of the artists that have shaped what I try to do. Like everything else it is not easily apparent, not because I am skilled at distilling my musical influences and making them my own, but because I can’t play.

I like the long musical arcs the songs take until they get where they are going. I like the often wistful feeling in the lyrics, the harmonies and the dated instrumentation. Some songs might sound locked into the decade in which they were recorded but that’s why they are so good.

Jackson Browne Radio (Last.fm).

What I’ve Taken From Other Music

It is really easy to see from where I have robbed my ideas. Every idea every musician has ever had has come from another source, however obscure the reference might be. That is what I suspect, at least.

One way that I get the urge to write something is when I am listening to music that I like. When I get the (copious) hair on my arms rising then I go and turn on the computer and try to transfer that feeling to what I am writing myself.

I like to be able to recognise patterns of chords that I hear and recognise as familiar in other people’s music. I think a good musician has an identifiable signiature sound but also a wide range of influences to draw upon and the imagination to twist those influences round and change them. I would say that is one of the crucial factors in deciding whether I like a piece of music.

There is some music that I like which is my Pot Noodle. I’m not supposed to enjoy it but I do anyway. That music has had a big direct influnce on what I do. There’s also music in which I hear something very unique. I aspire to writing something similar and of the same quality. Whether I can apply my own success criteria to the ideas that I steal in order to be a better musician, I don’t know.

The point of this is a series of posts I’m writing which flits between artists that I think might have affected the songs I write. There are hundreds of things that have indirectly made me the way I am and affected the music I come up with, but I can’t claim that any direct influnce has made what comes out of my head and into the computer any better, unfortunately.

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