Radiohead

[WeAreAs1 at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/18/00 12:33:40 AM, matti at devo.com writes:

<< I just watched Radiohead play on Saturday Night Live(a 
nationally-distributed 

television show for those outside the USA); the keyboardist had behind him a 

large modular, played some synth or other with wooden side panels and some 
knobs 

and sliders.....with an interesting controller : attached to his finger was a 

string which ran into the the left side of the keyboard. As he pulled on the 

string, the pitch increased; as he let it retract, the pitch decreased. He 
did 

his vibrato very nicely with it. >>

I saw that performance on SNL too.  Those guys are great!  That was the first 
time I had ever heard them.  They didn't show close-ups of the 
keyboard/controller very much during the performance, but it certainly did 
look like some kind of variant of the Ondes Martinot idea - probably set up 
to output CV to control that modular system.  It looked like some kind of 
custom-made device (hey, maybe he's a DIY'er too!).  I am fairly certain that 
the modular system he was using was a big Doepfer system.  The modules were 
definitely Doepfer-sized, and had silver panels with black knobs.

I could be mistaken, but it seemed like the pitches he was getting from that 
controller were corresponding (roughly) to the pitches of the adjacent keys 
on the keyboard that was right above the slider strip.  This is how the 
so-called "portamento" slide control strip on the Yamaha YC-30 and YC-45 
organs behaves.  On these organs, with a bit of practice, you can actually 
play melodies on the strip, just by playing the strip next to the key/note 
that you wish to hear.  Maybe the Yamaha CS60/CS80 control strip works the 
same way (??).

That synth guy has a very cool gig, at least compared to most rock and roll 
synth gigs.  What he's doing with that band kind of reminds me of the role 
Michael Cotten used to play in The Tubes, back in the 1970's, when he would 
provide (mostly) sound effects and noises on a couple of souped-up ARP 
2600's.  Michael Cotten was kind of the Morton Subotnik of rock and roll 
keyboardists, and probably about two or three decades ahead of his time.  In 
the Tubes' amazing, highly theatrical live shows, he got more sonic mileage 
out of those two ARPs than Keith Emerson could have even dreamed of getting 
out of his massive wall of Moog!  (on the other hand, Michael Cotten didn't 
have anything remotely resembling Keith's awesome organ and piano chops...)  
In the mid-1980's, he finally retired the ARPs and replaced them with a 
Prophet V and a DX7, at least for their live shows.  I'll bet he had some 
interesting DX7 patches...

Michael Bacich