Erasure • Features • Private Ear
Mike Hall (Tank Talk)
Past the flashing lights and caterpillar tracks, under the corrugated iron roof, there are keyboards welded into the ceiling, and of course, fluffy dice in front, which no Essex man can be without!
Vince always looks incredibly busy between songs and we soon found out why, when trying to load a song. Here's how in 7 "easy" steps!:
Hit "+" on the Xpander: the name of the next song is displayed.- Delete the information in the MC4 (sequencer) by pressing DEL then ENTER, i.e. erase all data from the last song.
- Load the next song sequence data from cassette drive into the MC4 by selecting data transfer mode, type next song number, hit ENTER and the MC4 will find the requested song and begin loading.
- Load the next drum kit into the AKAI LINN drum machine from the DAC hard disc. Select 6 from the disc menu to load, cursor to the appropriate kit, then enter LOAD 1, and the sounds begin to load.
- Change the patches on all the keyboards to the number of the next song.
- Once all the sounds have loaded into the drum machine, cursor to the right pattern for the next song. (If Vince were to hit PLAY at this point, you'd hear the previous pattern play the new sounds, i.e. total racket!)
Hopefully by now the MC4 should have loaded. Switch to PLAY mode and hit ENTER, the MC4 starts to play the keyboards while the drum machine runs in sync playing drums.
Try fitting all that lot in while Andy's telling his joke about being stopped on Hampstead Heath!
The DAC hard disc is divided into four partitions, each one contains the sounds for seven drum kits (one kit for each song), plus a pattern file, giving a total of 28 songs.
As Vince is using old Roland gear where patch numbers start at Bank 1 Sound 1 and continue in base 8, the first song, "Siren", has been given the filename 11; after 18 (Voulez Vous) comes 21 (Take A Chance On Me) and the encore is 44 (Sometimes).
The MC4 has four output channels, which can control up to six keyboards by using a custom switching box. The outputs are routed as follows:
Channel 1 plays the Minimoog (bass sounds)- Channel 2 plays the Roland Juno 60 (rhythm sequences)
- Channel 3 is routed to the switch box where it can be sent to either the Prophet 5 or Roland Jupiter 8. The switching is carried out by a multiplex signal sent from the MC4.
- Channel 4 controls either Oberheim Xpander left or right via the switch box.
Ten minutes before the very first show at Manchester Apollo, the switching box, which had been well-behaved in rehearsals, decided, with perfect timing, to explode!
As luck would have it, Tony Wride, airline pilot and analog synthesizer specialist, was just arriving to watch the concert, and got promptly whisked backstage to do some emergency repairs so that the show could go on!