“All the greatest music throughout the centuries has appealed to listeners on many levels and is rewarding to people with prior musical knowledge, and to those with no knowledge at all. I work at that in all my music.”

Keyboards

Yamaha CS80; grand piano (prefer Bosendorfer or Yamaha); Rhodes Stage 73;

Minimoog; Casiotone 202. “The Yamaha for the keyboard touch controls, it's the only polyphonic with that. The Mini is an alternative to the CS80’s multiple triggering, and is better as a soloing instrument. The Rhodes is good as a ‘gelling’ instrument when recording, and the Casio has those high, digital sounds and is good for orchestrating.

“It’d be good if other makers could look at the question of touch sensitivity. I don’t see the point in having an eight-voice polyphonic, which they make in the hope that people are going to use all their fingers, when there’s no real way of introducing expression. For example, if you use the new Jupiter-8, there's a button that automatically adds vibrato. I find that totally unresponsive and, for me anyway, totally useless. And of course you’ve got to take one hand off! Any instrument can only be judged by what musicians can express through it, and I think the majority of synths on the market don’t live up to that judgement for me.

Amplification

Live: MM 8/2 mixer; Quad 405 power amp “but don't drive it too high”; two cabs each with Gauss 12in. driver; two Piezo horns. Studio: Mainly DI, although “I'm beginning to tire of that and may use some rock amps soon”.

FX

On Rhodes, uses a “range of pedals”, ending up with Oberheim ring modulator.

Percussion/drum machines

Boss DR-55 for home practice.

Favourite studio/engineer

Utopia/Andy Jackson (now left Utopia to freelance).

Home recording

Two Pioneer cassette decks recorded back and forth via mixer, “but the quality's not too good”