Spandau Ballet: Guess the synth!

[calyx93]

Promars

[ronP]

oo


Hi. I'll go on the record with ROLAND ProMars "Compuphonic" as well . . .

btw: the video you posted lead me back to "Instinction" - which I have not seen since I was, like, 15. There is a fleeting glimpse of an OBERHEIM OB-Xa in that video. "Instinction" remains one of the strangest pop songs I have heard, with very unique synth worh throughout - high thin strings, shrill brass, and especially the weird, mid-range, octave-stacked melody of the chorus, which has a very haunting quality. Perhaps you can toss in a little synth lore about that song in a future post?




oo

[Micke]

Okay guys, it's time to reveal the answer now

The correct answer is Yamaha CS-10! surprise, surprise!

'braincandy' is the only one who guessed right, congratulations

I suspected most of you guys would guess on the Promars since it seems to be the synth most
often associated with early Spandau Ballet. I'm not sure why though, maybe it's because they
"used" one on TOTP back in the day? I dunno.

Richard Burgess: "I didn't use any of my keyboards such as the system 100M or the JP8 etc. (the Promars was John Walter's
and the CS80 Chris Heaton's). I didn't do any computer stuff either such as the MC8/MC4 microcomposer or the Fairlight CMI.
Spandau owned a little Yamaha keyboard (and I'm leaning towards it being the CS-10), it was very cheap but I thought that it
would be good to use that because it would be very distinctively theirs and I didn't really want to stamp them with my synth
sounds as much as I wanted to create a new band sound that would be identifiable as theirs. Most of the albums I did with them
were pretty organic - guitar, bass, drums and percussion with only a touch of synth here and there and of course we used a horn
section on Chant #1 for the next album. I remember thinking it was really primitive compared to anything else I worked with but
it had a really stark and uniquely distinctive sound and that really is the sound of the main riff on 'To Cut A Long Story Short'
combined with the guitar if I remember correctly. I'm almost positive that we didn't use any major synth stuff on Journeys to Glory.
I've always been a bit bemused by the fact that Spandau got referred to as a synth band when in fact most of it was guitar, bass,
drums and vocals. I've always been into orchestration so I would mix guitar with synth or piano and synth which can create the effect
of polyphony and I probably double tracked the main riff on To Cut a Long Story Short."

He doesn't seem to be 100% certain which Yamaha model it was but in the picture below you can see their guitar/keyboard player,
Gary Kemp, with a CS-10. Further, I have seen another picture from the early eighties where he uses a CS-10 on stage so I'm pretty
sure it's the same synth as used on the album.


Gary Kemp/Spandau Ballet live on stage, circa 1980.

Comments are welcomed!

cheers,
Micke

[gd]

Wow, even after reading this I still don't hear the CS10 flavour, but then again it has been so many years since I played one. To me it still has more of a Roland sound to it but as I said in my reply I have been wrong many a time before.

[I12]

there appears to my ears to be a polyphonic part

am i wrong? somebody?

if im not what was playing that?

[iProg]

there appears to my ears to be a polyphonic part

am i wrong? somebody?

if im not what was playing that?

It can be multitracked CS-10

[Micke]

From what I understand, anything that sounds polyphonic on the record was multi-tracked.

There's a lot of poly stuff going on in the final song of the album, "Toys".

[Composition86]

This is the official video of "To cut a long story short":
LINK
It can be seen a Promars: why would they show a Promars instead of a CS10?

[braincandy]

This is the official video of "To cut a long story short":
LINK
It can be seen a Promars: why would they show a Promars instead of a CS10?

Because it was just a video and it really didn't matter what synth they used. And what a godawful video it was.