Dom Beken is a BAFTA-nominated composer and musician, who is currently the keyboardist for Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets, where he performs alongside members of Pink Floyd and Spandau Ballet. Dom has also contributed his keyboard talents to bands such as The Orb, Transit Kings, and High Frequency Bandwidth, and is currently part of the...
The post Dom Beken, Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets / KillerStar / The Orb / High Frequency Bandwidth appeared first on The Keyboard Chronicles.
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(00:00):
I remember David Gilmour sort of ambling up to me as we were about to launch into ArnoldLane and leading over and saying, you know, I've never played Arnold Lane with anybody
else but Rick before.
I hope you're all right.
(00:21):
Hello and welcome to the keyboard Chronicles of podcasts for keyboard players.
I'm your host, David Holloway, and I'm thrilled as always to be here with you.
Uh, this episode, I'm really thrilled to bring you the amazing Dom Beacon.
As you'll hear, Dom has had a massive career across film, TV, playing with a range of actsfrom the orb through to one of his most recent gigs as part of the Nick Mason's source, a
(00:48):
full of secrets.
For those of you, think most people that listen to this or watch this are aware, NickMason is obviously one of the founding members of Pink Floyd and now tours with this
amazing band that includes Dom performing some of those earlier albums from Pink Floyd.
As you'll hear, that's one part, but we go into quite some depth on that.
(01:09):
The other projects, Dom has some amazing insights on the industry more broadly and so lotsto enjoy in this one.
So yeah, do jump in and I'll talk to you at the end of the show.
(01:30):
John, it's an absolute pleasure to have you.
um
we've got the first slightly cloudy day since May, so it's a delight.
The tourists are looking very unhappy, but I'm loving it.
Good, yeah, I know you've had some serious heat over there, even by Australian standards,so yeah, keep cool over there.
I thought we'd start off, Don, with just talking about your last 12 months.
(01:55):
You've had a busy 12 months in music to say the least.
Just tell us about what you've been up to the last four months before we go.
It's been actually the last four or five months I've been off dealing with a bit of afamily crisis.
I think I filled you in before we started recording.
so this is my first day or first couple of days back at work really.
But tail end of last year, we finished up what we think is our penultimate tour with NickMason and the Sourceful of Secrets, which was just yeah, absolutely magnificent.
(02:23):
And we finished off with a show in Frankfurt, which we really enjoyed.
And we went back and I had a listen to the recording I made of Steve, our front of houseengineer, and I made of our version of Echoes we played in Frankfurt and thought it
sounded great.
So we've just released that as a single, which people seem to like, which is nice.
(02:44):
Fantastic.
Stephen Wilson mixed it.
I helped him little bit with that, but it's Stephen's fantastic ears uh are on the ends ofthe controls.
So all credit to him.
He's done a Dolby Atmos version of it as well and we mastered it on piece of vinyl thatruns backwards.
I don't know if people know why that's a good thing, but the end of a piece of vinylalways sounds worse than the beginning of a piece of vinyl because the needle is traveling
(03:13):
more slowly in the groove and it means that as you get to the center of the record you canmaster less and less bass in it.
So if you have a song like Echoes that starts quietly
and has a big crescendo near the end, it's far better to have the needle at the outside ofthe record than the inside.
So that's why we did that.
And I think it's the first time a record has been released mastered that way using aNeumann lathe at Abbey Road.
(03:40):
There have been some other ones before.
There's been some reverse vinyls before, but I think we're the first people to releasesomething cut on a modified Neumann lathe at Abbey Road.
there you go.
An opening bit of Ikari for you all.
Love it.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
It certainly um taught me something.
just, we are going to definitely go into Source of Fuller Secrets, but you mentionedPenultimate Tour and it's been, I mean, it's been fairly widely publicised.
(04:07):
So is there an actual timeframe for the final tour or that's still yet?
to be determined.
Yeah, mean, our glorious commander in chief and professor, Mr.
Mason is relaxing and enjoying his summer.
although he's taking calls from us about, on, Nick, what are we going to do next year?
(04:31):
We've yet to put anything solid in the diary.
And to be fair to Nick, you know, he's, how can I put it, put it politely?
He's,
He's in the senior category.
He's definitely older than most of us and I think he's earned that right to take his time.
Absolutely.
Couldn't agree more.
(04:52):
So now we will come back to that, but I want to go back to your musical upbringing.
So just tell us a bit, a little bit about your earliest years as a child into adolescenceand what got you into music in the first place.
I think it's a default thing actually.
I just spent as much of my free time as possible playing the piano that my parents werekind enough to buy and put in the living room.
(05:17):
My mom did decide to send me to piano lessons, but it seems that I'm side dyslexic when itcomes to reading music.
I found as a kid, and I remember it quite clearly that
i could be given a piece of music and i would struggle to work out the first you knoweight bars but it was fairly easy to think i like i can kind of see how this is organized
(05:41):
and i'll just make the rest up in the same style
drove my piano teacher round the absolute twist but it meant that i just ended up learningpieces by ear or writing my own from from a pretty young age and that's kind of how i
started my i just always wanted to have a job in music doing music i never thought i wouldbe a i started out thinking i'd be a sound engineer and i learned because i love i love
(06:08):
the process of making records so i learned to be a sound engineer up at uh...
pastry studios in liverpool
which has sadly closed recently like so many others.
But I started as a sound engineer and then I remember a session where a band called Mansonbrought in a whole bunch of programming, new programming kit.
They brought in a Korg Triton and a Mac and a MIDI interface, handed it over to theirengineer.
(06:33):
I was the assistant at the time who looked at it and said, I know what to do with this.
And I sort of meekly from the corner said, if you want to give me a break from making tea.
and emptying the bins, I can do a string arrangement on that.
And so I ended up being a programmer as well.
That's amazing.
it.
And so, mean, given you're working in a studio, what was the transition there for you?
(06:57):
I started working with Guy Pratt who I met at a session in Trident Studios in the centreof London and we got on really well and he asked me if I'd go and do some work for him
programming his studio at Townhouse and through Guy I met Alex Patterson from The Orb andAlex and I got on really well and Alex kind of asked me to co-write some stuff for The
(07:24):
Orb.
And so I sort of ended up accidentally joining the all that way and Alex and I did moreand more things together, started writing together.
And then he asked me if I'd tour with him.
So that was sort of my first exposure really.
But I never, I didn't really, you know, I'm not one those keyboard players who enjoysshowing off with insanely fast chops and that kind of thing.
(07:49):
I like to make the right sound at the right place and play the right thing and support themusic.
and so it was a long time really until anything much happened in terms of being aperformer i think the first big thing was that uh...
brian johnson from a cdc was was not with a cdc at the time and had an idea to to do a newalbum and star band and i think it was actually uh...
(08:17):
i believe it was going uh...
he suggested me as a keyboard player much to my surprise and i just happened to have a bitof free time
that week.
So I threw a Wurlitzer and I think another MIDI keyboard in my boot and took myself up toJohn Henry's and ended up jamming in a room full of fantastic musicians with Brian on lead
(08:42):
vocals.
That project didn't come to fruition.
think Brian was invited back to join ACDC.
I think the brothers decided they'd do something else.
And then a short while later Lee Harris came up with the idea of the sources.
And I'd been invited to play keyboards at Guy's 50th birthday party and he had a jam withloads of musicians coming along.
(09:10):
David Gilmore came along, Gary Kemp came along, all sorts of really interesting players.
But only one guy, he wanted to play the organ.
So that was my sort of baptism of fire.
remember David Gilmore sort of ambling up to me as we were about to launch into ArnoldLane and leading over and saying, you know, I've never played Arnold Lane with anybody
(09:34):
else but Rick before.
I hope you're all right.
Okay.
And no pressure.
And there is a 32 bar organ solo in the middle of this, isn't there?
Yeah, that's right.
Okay.
Yeah, I remember.
I really don't remember.
It's a complete blur.
I'm sure I made an absolute hash of it.
(09:55):
I'm sure it was an absolute car crash, but...
I mean, they're still speaking to me and I got to play keyboards with Nick and Gary andGuy and Lee.
um
Yeah, that's right.
Now I do want, I'm not going to let you get away out of the orb quite that early as well,because I'm a massive orb fan and love that music from sort of the 90s into the 2000s as
(10:20):
far as electronic music as well.
So obviously that's incredibly different from what you've done since and you've done awhole range of genres.
What was the learning curve for you with the orb?
As you said, you may not be wanting to do lots of soloing, but that's not necessarilycalled for.
in stuff like the orb.
just tell us about your experience with that.
Was that something new for you?
(10:42):
I was looking for a way to move live orb shows on from the way that previous collaboratorswith Alex had worked, which was essentially having a console on stage and mixing live,
sort of pretty much building a mini studio.
And that was around about the time that Ableton Live came out.
(11:04):
So I was wanting to make the orb experience for the keyboard player much more live.
and integrate Ableton Live and remixing on the fly along with also taking a keyboard onstage and playing some of the parts live or getting as close to the parts on the record as
(11:24):
I could.
And a lot of them were samples, so it was a question of recreating those samples withsynths live on stage.
So that was the route that I took with that.
And do you remember what you do remember what since you were using back then?
It the thing with the all live at the time was it it wasn't the kind of organization thatwas used to taking big keyboard rigs of backline out on stage, so I really had to dine out
(11:53):
on Ableton live and soft sense and and some controllers, so Yeah, it wasn't ideal for me.
It wasn't until the sources that I got to really play the way that I wanted to
But it was great fun and Alex is a really dear friend and a great person to be creativewith.
So as you mentioned with Source of Fuller Secrets, you've definitely got a much fullerkeyboard rig and you've got a whole palette of sounds.
(12:19):
So tell us about, I mean, you've alluded to Guy Pratt and David Gilmore.
I mean, I think I'm getting how you ended up joining Source of Fuller Secrets, but justtell us a little bit about the formation of that and how you got.
Great.
mean, it's a really, the way we did it was the really old fashioned way of forming a band.
mean, it really was the first, the first five people that we thought of.
(12:43):
Lee Harris became a friend of mine because Guy had him on board to help put together themusicians for his 50th birthday.
So I got to know Lee through that and we became good friends.
And then Lee came up with this idea and obviously
called round and I was in the on the call list and we talked about what we could possiblydo and it it really was just a question of saying well the only way we can take this
(13:10):
forward is if we can persuade Nick to join us in a in a rehearsal studio somewhere andjust thrash some stuff out and I think when I was first approached with the source for the
secrets thing my memory of it at least is that I think they were hoping that a much more
uh...
accomplished or famous people play a mic come along and that my role might be a lot moreto be doing the sonics the atmosphere is the samples that you know just a sort of beer a
(13:43):
studio ways on the corner of the stage making which isn't bps and and stuff but i decidedto bring along a you know at the digital ham and
having listens to stuff and realize that you rick was mostly playing you for fees as boxcontinentals and hammond on that material so i grabbed a new c two days of to bring along
(14:06):
to the rehearsal and and mostly played that and and it it seems to work and part from thefact that it was to be longer than anybody else in the band to set up but by the time i
was up and running and could hear something and yet no one seemed to be like
Get that guy out the room, he's hopeless.
(14:29):
Much to my amazement.
uh I think you're probably uh vastly underestimating your skills, but as you know, too,it's as much about the hang is the actual, uh, virtuosity.
I mean, you obviously fitted in well with, with the team.
What was your learning curve there though, Dom, as far as you, I mean, you obviously had afew runs on the board as far as being a player and producer, but what, you know, what was
(14:53):
a ramp up in rehearsal?
I think we're all faking it aren't we?
We've all got imposter syndrome and I've got it in space.
But it was interesting because the difference between the sources going on tour and whenFloyd played that original material is the massive change in technology that we have
(15:17):
available now.
but yet when you listen to those records particularly psychedelic stuff you know set thecontrols and that you know those tracks they were great sonic experiment as from the start
yet on stage i think the one thing that nick especially really enjoyed was theimprovisation aspect of what they did so for me it was really a question of trying to
(15:42):
build a keyboard rake and and mindset around the sense of organa all the keyboard soundsfor
for early Pink Floyd that allowed you to be very hands-on and very improvisational at thesame time as being able to provide a really wide range of different sounds and ambiences
and textures to fit in.
(16:03):
So at one moment you're soloing, the next moment you're providing ambience and texture,the next minute you're providing a piano backing or a rhythm backing or even just
providing the nuts and bolts of the chord of the song for the guitars to sit on top of.
And at the same time trying to do that without taking an enormous, you know studio-sizedkeyboard rig on stage something that that we could act that the backline crew could
(16:29):
actually cope with I think we're border with that
Yeah.
And what are you actually taking out Dom?
So what was the balance you found there?
Because as you can imagine, there are a million and one Pink Floyd tribute acts, includingan amazing one that might sometimes co-host who's devastated.
I've got to say he's not here tonight.
had a work conflict.
(16:50):
In Australia you have tribute bands better than anybody else I know I think.
It's probably slightly to do with your geography I reckon.
So what was the question again?
I got distracted.
I just purely, what is the rig that you do take out with Saucerful of Secrets?
It does give you that balance between not too overwhelmed.
I've got to massive credit to my tech, Bob Stewart, who came up with the idea becauseoriginally what I wanted to combine a board of effects and kind of semi-modular sound
(17:22):
sources so that I could both process keyboards and generate audio at the same time andreally mess things around and be able to control whether I'm sending or blending any
particular set of keyboards with that and then also to be able to add
digital effects as well for things that there wasn't room for in the racks of themautomatically it was kind of okay we're have to die now on some plugins here and the
(17:51):
solution we hit upon was main stage which other got a bit on and not very happy with uh...
but it's the only piece of software i did i know people will write in the comments belowsay no you should use this issue is that uh...
there are other things out there that would
that have that kind of routing and controllability, but they were a little bit out of mytechnical comfort zone.
(18:17):
I mean, I certainly looked into using Ableton, but, and Ableton would have been able to doit, but I was gonna have to program in, it's just dropped out of my head now.
Ableton has a proprietary plugin format that you can write your own code and plugins toget routing, and the name of it has just dropped out of my head for a minute, I'm sorry.
(18:37):
And I was sort of, went down the with it and got it working and then thought, do you knowwhat, if this falls over in the middle of a tour, I'm not going to remember how I did
this.
So Ableton was, so that went and we went back to main stage.
I'm not a fan of it, but it does, it does the job just about.
And then I have a Nord C2D and Nord.
(19:01):
nor do quite sweet and look after me uh...
i really enjoy that i thought it was a great bit of kit because it's three organs in oneand uh...
and uh...
you know and and and sins and all that kind of stuff and all the draw bars and two sets ofdoor you anybody watching this is a keyboard fan knows inside out uh...
then i wanted to choose analog sent that i thought would be super reliable unstable butalso really flexible and very hands-on
(19:28):
So I bought a subsequent 37, which was an update on the little fatty and an update on thesub 37.
And I'm super happy with that.
I still use it all the time in the studio and live.
It's a mini controller and a great sounding synth.
And then on the other side, I have a couple of controller keyboards.
One is a weighted piano, which I've actually just upgraded to a Nord stage four just totake the piano duties away from the laptop.
(19:58):
And then I have an SL Mark II, SL Mark III, in addition.
And again, I use a lot of gear from Novation and Focusrite, and the SL is great.
It's a controller.
I've got all my pads for doing drum things, and I've got all my samples up there, andsplits and faders for controlling stuff in Mainstage.
(20:22):
And then the floor is just a whole swag of...
pedals, controller pedals, most of which are ascends or blends or, you know, each one goesto a different.
And then on the effects board, I've got a Boss ES5 and a Boss ES8, the control, thinkthere's 20 or 30 pedals on there, which are just frozen because they're all things that I
(20:44):
can't find a plugin that would sound the same.
And it's also hands on, you know, hands on control.
So I get a lot of time, I get some just stand up and twiddle knobs.
No, Bri, an overview, thank you.
And just going back to main stage, and I'm a main stage user and I agree with you totally.
I'm never a hundred percent comfortable with it.
What is it you particularly dislike about it?
(21:06):
Do you worry about reliability, just how difficult it is to set up?
They seem to have forgotten their professional user base.
I mean, for understandable commercial reasons, whilst it is sort of loosely based oneMagic logic that we remember and love, that functionality is now buried so deeply behind
all the pretty pictures and shortcuts for, you know, press one button, have instant technononsense for, you know, for...
(21:37):
for the quite genuine and and perfectly acceptable world of semi professionals or oramateurs i know i think link but why can't we have a some professional software
Yeah.
Hear, I'm hearing you.
And just on that, I mean, what are the soft synths that you are using?
mean, it sounds like you've got pretty much most stuff covered with hardware, but there'sobviously, I mean, you mentioned about samples.
(22:02):
So aside from samples, are there some soft synths that are fundamental to your work?
Not really, to be honest with you.
There are a few things that crop up every now and again for certain things.
I still like Spectrosonics Omnisphere.
I think that's a great little tool for quickly getting pads.
Particularly now that it's got so many really nice emulations of analog gear, it does thatnicely, but it's heavy on the processor.
(22:30):
I think there's a little bit of Native Instruments Massive on one of the tracks.
Do know what, without actually going back in and looking, those are the two that spring tomind.
I tend to use little Spitfire strings, that kind of stuff.
em And what's your redundancy Dom?
So I mean, do you have a second laptop if things fail or you've got enough coverage on thehardware?
(22:53):
Obviously samples would be an issue, but you've got enough coverage on the hardware.
If it goes down, you can survive.
This is my nightmare.
This is my absolute production nightmare because, um, yeah, I designed the rig and thenour production team took one look at it and went, so what happens when the laptop crashes?
And I said, well, it all goes off until I restart it.
(23:16):
Um, so they said, all right, well, you'll, you'll need to a completely redundant system.
So I basically have, apart from the physical keyboards, there is a completely redundantsystem.
that operates all the time.
So there's two laptops.
There's two Focusrite Red 8 Pre's.
There's, I use, up until now I've been using DI boxes and switches by a company calledOrchid.
(23:44):
And Peter there used to make them all, they were all hand built and incredibly good valueand they sound amazing.
As far as I'm aware, I think he's pretty much semi-retired now.
so i've got a horrible feeling that on the next or i might move over to radials for thatside but yet no this there's a completely redundant system
(24:05):
Yeah, no, that's amazing.
Yeah, the radio KL8 sounds like an ideal solution for you with the switch over for laptopsand stuff.
But yeah, radio, you know, I'm a fan, but um that's amazing.
don't think I have, mean, aside from any highlights over the time with Source of Secretsas far as gigs you've played that have really stood out for you or, and also I'd probably
(24:27):
throw in the train wreck question here.
So has something gone spectacularly wrong that you can laugh about?
a couple there is there are a couple of things I did have a slow motion train wreck thatwent on over about four or five gigs where originally I had an overheim MC 1000 controller
(24:48):
keyboard with weighted keys which I've had for years and I really liked and One night Iwas playing fearless, which is piano led and I'm like well hang on a minute.
I'm playing
I'm playing the piano and I'm getting loads of stuck notes and they're coming a second ortwo or three seconds after I'm playing them.
So over the next five gigs this kept happening and Bob was tearing his hair out looking atthe computers trying to work out where the stuck notes were, know, did we not have enough
(25:17):
RAM, were the computers too hot?
We couldn't figure out, but then it was happening on both machines simultaneously.
And finally, after about four or five gigs, we realized that it was the keyboard itself.
And it was after the fifth gig where I was playing the piano solo, I think, either inFearless or what was the other one we used to play that had a piano solo in it?
We've dropped it now.
And that was me happily soloing along.
(25:40):
And all of sudden there was a moment of silence and then the world's most enormousclusterfuck of notes, as if I'd just fallen on top of the piano.
Oh, yeah, it sounds like some-
Yeah, the keyboard was, don't know, Bob will tell you, the keyboard was buffering somestuff up or storing stuff and then squirting it all out later.
I was really tempted to get up, throw the whole keyboard rig on the floor and march offstage in a hissy fit.
(26:08):
luckily, just doing side eye with my tech in the wings, like
And then going, there's enough to kind of keep me, keep me there.
But, but the other one was a bit of a classic.
If anyone's seen the show at the beginning of echoes, the stage goes into complete andutter darkness.
(26:29):
There's a, there's a total blackout.
And then I have to play the ping, the sonar ping, the piano through Leslie speaker.
And one night, you know, there's totally, we go to
We've a blackout, there's total silence, the audience is like, oh, we know what's comingnext.
It's echoes.
And I went to play that B and I just, I could see nothing.
(26:52):
just somehow, I just looked at the keyboard and I literally was just reaching into thedark.
And I think, and I just managed to play a really interesting jazz chord of I think threesemitones all next to each other instead of the ping.
Nice.
So for every geek since then, at the beginning of Echoes, Bob crawls across the stage onall fours, commando style, appears under my keyboard with a little gooseneck lamp and
(27:22):
places it over B8.
The keyboard!
Wow.
That is dedication.
He's a great.
I love it.
Amazing stories.
Thanks, Don.
And I will ask one last question, which was, there some songs for you that youparticularly enjoy playing out of that amazing catalog?
You know, what,
really keep you interested to this day.
(27:43):
I've played in and every show, there's always a song in the set list that you go, it'sthis one.
All right, just buckle up and get through it.
And the thing I love about The Saucers is there isn't one of those in the set, not asingle one.
We kind of have a rule in the band that if anybody in the band doesn't like a song, itgets dropped.
(28:06):
It does make putting the set list together murder sometimes, and it can take it.
lot of debate amongst the five of us.
there are moments that are a bit special.
Obscured by Clouds is just great.
It's one of those early songs that Rick really let the synthesizers breathe on it and youget to be epic and expansive.
(28:28):
And Echoes is another really special moment.
one of those, it's very weird.
The first time we played it, I started and played the
paying in the first little bit of the song is is me on my own which is lovely and iremember just playing these are pictures of the keyboard my rick played and then looking
at the front of the audience and there were one going to women sitting right in front ofme absolutely pouring with tears and i was like shit what's going on what's the better so
(29:01):
i looked at it looks across the barry are and had a security so he comes out of what whatwhat what's the best
What's going wrong?
These people in the front row are sick.
They're not well.
Can somebody go down and check what's gone wrong?
They're just really enjoying themselves.
They're really emotional.
Oh my god, amazing.
(29:24):
See, that's your imposter syndrome kicking in again, Dom.
That's what that was.
I love it.
And you just raised a really interesting point and this is obviously a faulty assumption.
I think it's amazing that the five of you determine your set list within reason and whatsongs and if someone doesn't like a song that drops, I'd assume because obviously Nick
being one of the original members that it might've been, and I don't mean this in anegative way, but more of a dictatorship as far as here's what we're doing.
(29:50):
it sounds-
It's great that you some good collaboration think it's fair to say, and I don't think Nickwould disagree, that he just really enjoys playing in a band.
I think that he misses, I think he misses that period of Floyd where they got on reallysuper well and they collaborated as a band, as a four piece or a short while as a five
piece.
And he's really a collaborative player.
(30:11):
I think it's also the essence of his drumming.
He doesn't, he's not one of those drummers or percussionists that plays
you know insanely crazy fast fills but he's unbelievably musical and what he loves isreacting to what everybody else is playing and supporting the music with those you know
those from normally melodic tom fills and and i think that really is his jam and so that'swhy it was the first five people we got in the room you got on together and it's the same
(30:39):
five people now and and you know we had an issue i won't tell the story but we did have anissue on the first tour where was
possible that one of the five of us wouldn't be able to make the shows in Canada and Wesort of we huddled together in the pre-production rehearsals.
We were already in Washington by that point in Washington State and we huddled together asa band and so what are we gonna do if we can't take one of us to To Canada now can
(31:05):
somebody else cover the parts and the answer was yes, but no man left behind It's all fiveof us or none of us.
and it's it's that kind of band
Gary and Guy have been friends for years and years and years.
They're very close mates.
I've known Guy since 1999 and we've become very, close as well.
He's become a really good friend and so has Lee over these past few years.
(31:30):
And that's what makes it a lot of fun.
think that's why when you come to see us, we look like we're having fun on stage becausewe just love being together.
We love playing together.
That's right.
No, amazing.
No, thank you for that.
Now I am desperate to get onto Killer Star as well, because this was a revelation.
I'll admit that I was unaware of Killer Star until doing research and it's been anabsolute revelation.
(31:54):
though, well, I shall let you talk about it.
Dom, tell us about what Killer Star is.
It's not my project.
This was started by Rob Fleming and James Sedge.
And I didn't know Rob or anything about him or James before they approached me.
ah But James had been writing stuff and playing in bands for years.
And he also has a record label, Vintage League Music, which is based both in the US and inthe UK.
(32:19):
And he puts out lot of great indie music on there as well.
He's an absolute music lover and a great songwriter.
and both listed to trust as well when we told and managing to take chunks of people withthat david bally association with us and it works it work great and i i only got to be
involved because uh...
(32:41):
robin james came to see a source of a show that they came to the royal abo all and andthey they'd literally pains me a message uh...
through through a website
and it was one of those things where actually I was on holiday at the time and justdecided to go through all the junk mail I had and I thought that that one's interesting, I
(33:02):
wonder if that's real or not and James and I got in contact and the rest is history.
But yeah, to play with those guys is incredible, absolutely incredible.
Yeah, and so from a keyboard viewpoint, I can't avoid asking.
We've had the absolute privilege of having Mike Garson on the show.
We talked to him for about 90 minutes.
He was amazing.
tell us.
(33:24):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So tell us about the sort of interaction there and even playing live, you know, how youguys worked out what you're doing.
Yeah, I'm just fascinated.
The thing is the piano.
So generally speaking, he does piano duties and I do anything that's not piano duties,really.
(33:44):
But it's still one of those bands where we are playing relatively small venues.
So it's loud on stage.
We don't have in ears all around.
There's still wedges around the place.
it's, from my point of view, it's...
it's still very much in the process of being refined and each gig gets better and better.
We're putting out an EP of the show we did in New York in November and I think that's thebest performance the band have done so far.
(34:11):
Yeah, no, it's absolutely amazing.
mean, I'm assuming it's the 100 Club one, the Children of Revolution single that's beenreleased.
I mean, I'm just in a cover band, Dom, but I've already sent that to our band mate sayingthat's how that should be played.
You know, we should be playing that.
So I'll linking to all that, but it is absolutely amazing.
(34:31):
I assume you managed to drill Mike for some anecdotes around um playing with David.
I know he gave us lots of great stories and I can...
I haven't actually had time to sit down with Mike and to drill him for anecdotes.
We've had so many other things music-wise to talk about.
On the odd occasion, we've had time out of rehearsals before a gig to go and grab a biteor a glass of beer together.
(34:55):
We're too busy talking keyboards, piano and music.
That's good.
Also, I don't know about you, but I find it difficult when you meet people who
Whose work you're a big fan of apart from anything else and they've played with some ofyour heroes Literally it it's sometimes quite difficult to find the right moment to start
(35:20):
Plugging them for stories, you know, know people who are better at it than I am
No, you're right.
There's a difference between being a colleague and a fanboy.
I know people who manage to balance that very well, much better than I do.
I my friend Guy has got more anecdotes than I've ever had breakfasts.
(35:41):
But you know, stick to your knitting, Grandma, that's not my thing.
But if you want anecdote, he's your man and he gets some out of everyone.
Yeah, he does.
I've watched some of the interviews with guys.
Well, yeah, look, he's an amazing raconteur.
That's for sure.
No, that's great.
Thank you.
So yeah, Killerstar will definitely be linking to and I don't I know we're a little bitshort on time, but I was also keen to talk about sort of even other projects you involved
(36:07):
with like Belker and Strolke, Just Jack and stuff like that.
Any comments you make about that stuff from sort of the early 2000s and
So this is the other thing that somehow has disappeared into the annals of history becauseat the same time I had a band with Alex called High Frequency Bandwidth and we put out
quite a lot of stuff with that project.
(36:27):
And at that period of time I had a studio in Ealing Film Studios and I was doing a lot offilm and TV work and we were kind of making some bread and butter doing television
advertising as well and my partner in crime in that business was a guy called AnthonyAdams, Ant Adams.
he's a fantastic musician really great composer as well and a genius at that same musicand and covering other genres and we both had a lot of of so hip-hop beats and and jazz
(36:57):
and the idea came up will that when i was also spare downtime let's let's write somethat's right some chains together and and the belton stroke robin came out came out of it
but it was at the time when no music sales weren't
great record companies didn't have a huge amount of money to promote.
weren't really in a position to tour.
(37:17):
So it's one of those little hidden gems that I'm still quite proud of, Belkron Stravko.
And high frequency bandwidth sort of suffered a similar kind of thing.
I'm still really pleased with that record.
We had a fantastic guest vocalist on it in form of Dynamax, MC Dynamax.
uh...
is back out in the states now and yeah it was just a really nice period and that's you hada great vibe and we had some really cool some really cool people around
(37:45):
Yeah, nice.
No, thank you.
And then I do want you mentioned film and TV again, and I know you've got quite a, acredit list there as far as film, TV and gaming.
So mean, two parts of that.
Uh, what got you into that in the first place, but also the challenges and you mentionedsync licensing and stuff as well, how I believe that's dropped off just even in the last
(38:07):
year due to AI and a bunch of other challenges.
It's changed a lot and my role in it has changed a lot.
My approach to it, which I think in the end led me to not having quite as much work as Iwould have liked to have done, has a lot to do with the fact that I hate dining out on
presets and everything being in the box.
(38:32):
just, if anything feels too easy to me, I will find a way to make it more difficult.
and to make it more creative and more interesting and to have, you know, fewer samples,fewer quick VST fixes to things in an industry that was developing in a way that other
(38:54):
composers were able to, you know, if they got a brief for something, they'd knock outseven, eight, nine ideas.
And commissioners love that.
Whereas I would say, no, this is what I really think you should have.
And, you know,
I would play guitar on it and I would play bass on it and I would put up my drum kit andmic it up and play drums on it and then I would ask players to come in and put strings on
(39:19):
it or whatever it, you know, whatever it needed.
And that always is my approach to everything really.
And I'm not very good at that stack it high, flog it cheap, which I...
Sorry, that sounds like I'm being really bitchy about other composers.
I'm not.
I just don't have that...
know that ability to take one brief and knock out seven eight ideas for it for somebody tochoose from.
(39:47):
I'd much rather work the most successful things I've done, but when I've been working witha director um or creative lead, he said, look, I trust your your instinct on this.
What should it be?
And OK, then we do go back and make changes, but always a development of the originalidea.
Usually.
I mean, there are times when you sit back and you're um
(40:08):
you you'd be your quality control circuit kicks in and you say no that needs stitching andwe'll start again but i much prefer working you know really closely with with a creative
to if you're doing stuff that's audio visual and this is why ended up in in video games ifind i find those guys are really easy to work with and are really happy to have creative
(40:33):
discussions and to let people take ownership of their part of the project
And I think it's the thing I love most about that video game work as I mentioned beforethe interview I've kind of had the last six months off So it's a funny time to do an
interview and talk about what I'm doing at the moment because I'm just restarting all thatBut I actually do a lot of work with a company that I helped found I'm a founding member
(40:56):
called snap finger click and We do really nice social gaming.
We work quite a few projects Ongoing with them and they're a super team of people
and make really fun games the kind of stuff that is not a kid in the bedroom just allnight staring shooting people in the face and they're much more collaborative and that's
(41:17):
that's a really fun area to work with and i have been talking to a couple of other studiosabout some bigger triple-a style projects which to have which i haven't been able to take
off uh...
and start work on the last six months but i'm hoping there's gonna be some more of thatbecause i quite enjoyed doing
orchestral and drum crossover stuff and that kind of dramatic score and sound.
(41:41):
Are you finding it's still too early days that AI is heavily impacting that morecollaborative creative stuff?
AI has the ability to recreate and copy anything which is very generic.
I mean the only hope I have for composers and producers like me is that because we'realways pushing the boundary and trying to make things more difficult and trying to be more
(42:04):
creative and come up with new sounds, new ways of doing things that the sort of work thatcomposers and producers like I do is more difficult for AI to copy.
But it is...
It is a serious problem and like all these things, I'm waiting for the public to pick upon what companies like Spotify in particular and Daniel Ek in person are trying to do both
(42:31):
to our creative industries and to our military and to our wider world.
You have a Spotify account, whether you pay a monthly fee or whether you put up with theadverts,
you are directly contributing to the destruction of music as we know it and the creativeindustries and you're directly contributing to the development of AI and warfare as well.
(42:55):
I think that that is a despicable way to run technology.
And I really think that consumers have to have a choice and to step away from that.
Given that you're sort of, let's say you're halfway through your career, you know, maybeyou've got another 20 or 30 years in the industry if you can cope that long, Dom, what
advice would you give to aspiring musicians who are just starting out and trying toestablish themselves in what's now an increasingly challenging industry?
(43:21):
that's really difficult i think it's very difficult in the sense that for a while musiccease to be something that people pay for uh...
that we're coming out the other side of that in that people are now putting their hands intheir pockets to pay for subscription services but we've got a long battle ahead of us to
challenge the way they suscription services distribute that income and and that goes forall of them not to spotify uh...
(43:50):
But the one piece of advice I would say is that you just, you've got to be flexible andyou've got to be able to turn your hand to all sorts of different things.
And I think problem solving is, the, you know, it's the key thing.
You know, if ever you get an opportunity to do something, don't ever say you can't do it.
Just sit down and figure out your way to do it.
(44:10):
And that is why, you know, I've ended up with a career where if it's to do with audiopretty much, you know, once you've invested in your
your studio your setup even if it's just a laptop that's going to be expensive andinterface and i will do anything you know i'd i'd do sound design for video games uh...
for snapping a click i still do will record voiceover and and that kind of stuff for themit's tedious but some someone's got to do it that anything i've been asked to do you know
(44:42):
you big big gulp
and that kind of weird pit in your stomach of, my god, how am going to do this?
And then sit down and figure out how you can do it.
mean, if you've got, if you've got ears and some musical skills and that's your, you know,that's your, you know, that's your jam, figure it out.
Yeah.
No, great guidance.
Thank you.
And we also ask all our guests to tag a keyboard player.
(45:05):
So is there a keyboard player out there, Dom, that you've admired that you would actuallylike to find out more about their story?
I didn't get any prior notice of this.
players that I'm really interested in are synthesists who've done really interestingthings with using keyboards to create new types of music.
(45:26):
So I've always been massively inspired by, well, know, Vangelis is Jean-Michel Ja, IsaiahTomita, Thomas Dolby, absolutely.
Yes.
but there's a lot of people use his chops i really admire but they're not players thatuh...
whose jobs i'm ever gonna steal and i've had an absolute brain farce which is reallyhorrible if the if i ever meet the man he'll kill me for this the guy places you know
(45:55):
quite as play with you know
Matt Johnson.
Oh yeah.
We've, we've, we've had, yeah, we've, we've actually had the pleasure pre video days.
We've had the pleasure.
I had few before he passed away and my number was passed over so I got to spend a
(46:34):
reasonable amount of time with rick on the last projects on sadly unfinished he wasworking on but he is piano style and at his way of interjecting jazz voicings into rock
and ambient music which is quite incredible i mean absolutely incredible he had a realknowledge and understanding of the way people at miles davis put together harmony and put
(47:00):
back into what he was doing for pink floyd and
I think without Richard on those records, Pink Floyd would never have been the band theywere.
And the fact that he was the quiet one and he didn't scream and shout and push himself tothe front means that he's chronically overlooked as an artist and as a composer.
(47:25):
just some of the chord sequences he came up with are monstrous.
and even even going back to source of the songs also secrets and that is that is justinsane and i you know i still spend some every now and again sitting down trying to
analyze that and think so how do you decide that that is the movement you're make and yethe was he was phenomenal absolutely from a little and a big influence but it's because
(47:53):
he's all been playing and his piano player
Absolutely.
No, yes.
No, thank you.
And we're onto our second last question.
This is one I did warn you about, which is the Desert Island disc.
So if you have to rattle off five albums that have had a big impact on you, what wouldthey be?
Here's a strange one, which definitely should be in my five Des Island discs, Money Mark'sKeyboard Repair, the original version.
(48:14):
Money Mark, who was the keyboard player with the Beastie Boys.
if you haven't heard, I think the original has been deleted from most streaming servicesbecause he re-recorded it and nice seeded it up.
But the first version was a fantastically lo-fi recorded at home on what sounds like acassette deck in one take practically.
(48:36):
or the very most a Tascam 4 track or something like that.
That's an awesome album.
I love it.
Very unfashionably or this is very uncool, it's very uncool, but I got into Pink Floydbecause of Dark Side of the Moon and I won't have it said that it isn't their best piece
(48:59):
of work ever even though I don't get to play it.
I love all the other stuff and I love playing the stuff that
led up to it uh...
but i think it stands out amongst their back catalog by a country mile and and i know thati should say i'm it's a something much more obscure by them and you know uh...
(49:20):
i'd love to see a book tells you i love metal uh...
i love the source for the secrets and i don't know about my sorry uh...
say but but i do i'm on call i'm sorry
I've got two.
I'm just yeah.
No, it's great.
Am I allowed a classical one?
I mean am I allowed to say that I'm going back and listening to Adagio for Strings bySamuel Barber and I'll never forgive whoever it was who decided to put a dance beat behind
(49:50):
it and play it all on synthesizers.
Who was that?
Who was it?
I can't remember but I know what you mean.
I know the version you mean.
my ears.
That hurts my ears almost as much as the fact that I was sitting in a bar in New York acouple of nights ago and I heard a country and western version of Comfortably Numb.
Also, whoever did that should apologize.
(50:12):
All the other artists whose albums I absolutely adore as well.
But I'm trying to think of ones that are synth heavy.
um
Yeah, no, well done.
No, great job.
And our very last question, Dom, is what we call a quick fire 10.
So just 10 really short and sharp questions with 10 really short and sharp answers.
So first album you recall hearing as a child had an impact on you or you remember.
(50:38):
What's the most important pre-gig ritual for you?
So let's use Sauce Fillers Secrets as the band.
What do you need to do to feel settled?
I a glass of white wine in honor of Rick Wright.
Always, last thing I do before I go on stage, just a third of a glass.
Rick always had glass of wine before he went on stage.
I always have a third of a glass of white wine.
If you hadn't been a musician, Dom, what do you think your career choice would have been?
(51:02):
I'll my favorite answer that question was was Peter Kraut.
Somebody once said to him, if you hadn't been a footballer, what would you have been?
And he said, a virgin.
uh I have no idea.
was one of those things where I just really had had no choice.
My my dad, who I lost quite recently, never did what he really wanted to do for a job inhis life.
(51:25):
I think he'd have been really happy in something like motor racing as an engineer.
And he didn't.
And I always said,
I want to be much happier than my dad and therefore I want to do what I want to do for aliving.
I want my passion to be my job.
the answer is if I wasn't a musician, unemployed.
(51:48):
Yeah, or a virgin or both.
So...
That's right!
There's your next project named on.
You can get that for me for um free.
tour...
favourite tour you've ever done, if that's possible.
would favorite, favorite tour.
to be honest with you, it was the 2023 SourceFull did a short, fairly short European tour.
(52:16):
And in it we did Pompeii, Matero, uh just these amazing amphitheaters in Italy, which werejust, yeah, phenomenal.
I think that was
some of the most fun I've had.
Much easier to tell you about the worst tours I've ever done, but anyway.
(52:36):
I love playing in Italy because we get such a diverse crowd there, I have to say.
But one of the most interesting things was on our 2021 tour, if I've got two minutes, wewere actually booked to play in Russia.
The Special of Secrets were booked to play the Kremlin in Moscow and the Grand Theatre inSt.
(52:57):
Petersburg.
Suddenly the president of that country turned out to be the world's biggest cunt and so weimmediately decided not to go there Why something because he's got competition now as well
a lot of competition but at the time he was head and shoulders above everybody else Wecancelled immediately cancelled a big chunk of the tour and we ended up playing Estonia
(53:22):
Latvia and Lithuania instead and that was absolutely fascinating because
those countries were banned from hearing Pink Floyd and were banned from hearing anypopular rock and roll music until after Perestroika, until the 80s.
so their approach to music is, popular music is all new.
(53:47):
Pink Floyd isn't old to them, it's new because they weren't allowed to hear it.
So the reaction of those crowds was incredible.
We were kind of...
playing this fifty year old music but as far as they were concerned it was contemporarybecause they've been banned from hearing it in up until relatively recently so
Yeah, that's an amazing pick.
(54:08):
I do want to say we are very swearing supportive on this podcast.
Swearing is not an issue at all.
And I'd like to congratulate you as the first guest that's ever dropped the C-bomb.
So that there you go.
You've broken some new ground there.
That's fine.
No issue at all.
a corporate meeting with some very senior people at a very big video game company inAmerica and yeah, the reaction was bad.
(54:37):
Definitely not a bad reaction here.
um A favourite music documentary or movie, Dom, that you'd
I told you that I love Dark Side of the Moon, so everyone knows I'm not cool and so I'veprobably watched the Beatles documentary about seven times.
This is the letter B one, the whole eight hours.
Yep.
(54:57):
Yep.
Good, good pick.
uh Name one thing you'd like to see invented that would make your life as a keyboardplayer easier.
audio.
No, you're absolutely right.
no, I agree.
And last but not least, your favourite non-musical activity or hobby, what keeps you saneoutside of music?
cooking for people.
(55:18):
Yeah, that's my thing.
I'm messing about on boats, but I'm not really wealthy enough to have the amount of boatplaying time I'd really like.
yeah, if I'm not on a boat, cooking for people or cooking on a boat.
uh
(55:38):
right.
I cannot thank you enough.
It's been absolutely amazing.
I know you need to duck off in a minute.
So I can't thank you enough for taking the time.
I know Salsa Full of Secrets, you toured Australia only in the last couple of years,didn't you?
I didn't get to see it, but yeah.
So hopefully you're back at some stage for what you've
we'll see.
(55:59):
I I guess everybody will understand that Nick kind of feels that if we do go out again,we'd like it to be kind of easy and a little less travel heavy.
Yeah.
And I would love to be down.
I mean, I'd like to do New Zealand because my mum was from New Zealand, so I'm half Kiwi,so I've never got to play there.
(56:22):
So if anybody wants to hire me to do an Australia and New Zealand tour.
I'm up for it.
I've got one New Zealand transport I'm allowed in.
Yeah, look, it sounds like a good outing for the unemployed virgins.
But no, Dom, thank you so much.
um Yeah, can't thank you enough for your insights.
Definitely.
Yes, it's a real pleasure to talk.
Let me know when it pops out and you have to put the parental advisory on it.
(56:55):
And there we have it.
I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I enjoyed recording it with Dom.
Huge thanks to Dom for his time.
He's had one hell of a few months and it's hugely appreciated him spending the time togive us his insights.
uh I just wanna give a quick shout out to our gold and silver supporters.
So the amazing Mike from midnightmastering.com.
(57:15):
If you've got your own creations and want a great job on having them mixed and mastered,then Mike's your guy.
Do check out midnightmastering.com.
The amazing Dave Bryson team at the uh the musicplay.com forums and particularly thekeyboard corner.
um As I always say, being there over 20 years and proud to do so is such a valuable wealthof information and just a nice community.
(57:41):
The amazing Tammy Katcha from Tammy's Musical Studio.
Thank you Tammy for your ongoing and long-term support.
It's hugely appreciated.
And last but definitely not least, the brilliant Dewey Evans.
musician extraordinaire from the Sunnylander Wales.
Thank you, Derry, as always for your support as well.
If you'd like to keep in touch or give us feedback, we remain on all the socials, soFacebook and Instagram and Blue Sky when I think to use it, even on TikTok here and there,
(58:10):
um and also good old fashioned email at editor at keyboardchronicles.com.
We love hearing your feedback.
And we also do get lots of feedback on our YouTube channel.
We try and respond to each and every one of those pieces of feedback.
So yeah, that's always appreciated.
So again, thank you.
We'll be back in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime, keep on playing.
I remember David Gilmour sort of ambling up to me as we were about to launch into ArnoldLane and leading over and saying, you know, I've never played Arnold Lane with anybody
else but Rick before.
I hope you're all right.
(00:21):
Hello and welcome to the keyboard Chronicles of podcasts for keyboard players.
I'm your host, David Holloway, and I'm thrilled as always to be here with you.
Uh, this episode, I'm really thrilled to bring you the amazing Dom Beacon.
As you'll hear, Dom has had a massive career across film, TV, playing with a range of actsfrom the orb through to one of his most recent gigs as part of the Nick Mason's source, a
(00:48):
full of secrets.
For those of you, think most people that listen to this or watch this are aware, NickMason is obviously one of the founding members of Pink Floyd and now tours with this
amazing band that includes Dom performing some of those earlier albums from Pink Floyd.
As you'll hear, that's one part, but we go into quite some depth on that.
(01:09):
The other projects, Dom has some amazing insights on the industry more broadly and so lotsto enjoy in this one.
So yeah, do jump in and I'll talk to you at the end of the show.
(01:30):
John, it's an absolute pleasure to have you.
um
we've got the first slightly cloudy day since May, so it's a delight.
The tourists are looking very unhappy, but I'm loving it.
Good, yeah, I know you've had some serious heat over there, even by Australian standards,so yeah, keep cool over there.
I thought we'd start off, Don, with just talking about your last 12 months.
(01:55):
You've had a busy 12 months in music to say the least.
Just tell us about what you've been up to the last four months before we go.
It's been actually the last four or five months I've been off dealing with a bit of afamily crisis.
I think I filled you in before we started recording.
so this is my first day or first couple of days back at work really.
But tail end of last year, we finished up what we think is our penultimate tour with NickMason and the Sourceful of Secrets, which was just yeah, absolutely magnificent.
(02:23):
And we finished off with a show in Frankfurt, which we really enjoyed.
And we went back and I had a listen to the recording I made of Steve, our front of houseengineer, and I made of our version of Echoes we played in Frankfurt and thought it
sounded great.
So we've just released that as a single, which people seem to like, which is nice.
(02:44):
Fantastic.
Stephen Wilson mixed it.
I helped him little bit with that, but it's Stephen's fantastic ears uh are on the ends ofthe controls.
So all credit to him.
He's done a Dolby Atmos version of it as well and we mastered it on piece of vinyl thatruns backwards.
I don't know if people know why that's a good thing, but the end of a piece of vinylalways sounds worse than the beginning of a piece of vinyl because the needle is traveling
(03:13):
more slowly in the groove and it means that as you get to the center of the record you canmaster less and less bass in it.
So if you have a song like Echoes that starts quietly
and has a big crescendo near the end, it's far better to have the needle at the outside ofthe record than the inside.
So that's why we did that.
And I think it's the first time a record has been released mastered that way using aNeumann lathe at Abbey Road.
(03:40):
There have been some other ones before.
There's been some reverse vinyls before, but I think we're the first people to releasesomething cut on a modified Neumann lathe at Abbey Road.
there you go.
An opening bit of Ikari for you all.
Love it.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
It certainly um taught me something.
just, we are going to definitely go into Source of Fuller Secrets, but you mentionedPenultimate Tour and it's been, I mean, it's been fairly widely publicised.
(04:07):
So is there an actual timeframe for the final tour or that's still yet?
to be determined.
Yeah, mean, our glorious commander in chief and professor, Mr.
Mason is relaxing and enjoying his summer.
although he's taking calls from us about, on, Nick, what are we going to do next year?
(04:31):
We've yet to put anything solid in the diary.
And to be fair to Nick, you know, he's, how can I put it, put it politely?
He's,
He's in the senior category.
He's definitely older than most of us and I think he's earned that right to take his time.
Absolutely.
Couldn't agree more.
(04:52):
So now we will come back to that, but I want to go back to your musical upbringing.
So just tell us a bit, a little bit about your earliest years as a child into adolescenceand what got you into music in the first place.
I think it's a default thing actually.
I just spent as much of my free time as possible playing the piano that my parents werekind enough to buy and put in the living room.
(05:17):
My mom did decide to send me to piano lessons, but it seems that I'm side dyslexic when itcomes to reading music.
I found as a kid, and I remember it quite clearly that
i could be given a piece of music and i would struggle to work out the first you knoweight bars but it was fairly easy to think i like i can kind of see how this is organized
(05:41):
and i'll just make the rest up in the same style
drove my piano teacher round the absolute twist but it meant that i just ended up learningpieces by ear or writing my own from from a pretty young age and that's kind of how i
started my i just always wanted to have a job in music doing music i never thought i wouldbe a i started out thinking i'd be a sound engineer and i learned because i love i love
(06:08):
the process of making records so i learned to be a sound engineer up at uh...
pastry studios in liverpool
which has sadly closed recently like so many others.
But I started as a sound engineer and then I remember a session where a band called Mansonbrought in a whole bunch of programming, new programming kit.
They brought in a Korg Triton and a Mac and a MIDI interface, handed it over to theirengineer.
(06:33):
I was the assistant at the time who looked at it and said, I know what to do with this.
And I sort of meekly from the corner said, if you want to give me a break from making tea.
and emptying the bins, I can do a string arrangement on that.
And so I ended up being a programmer as well.
That's amazing.
it.
And so, mean, given you're working in a studio, what was the transition there for you?
(06:57):
I started working with Guy Pratt who I met at a session in Trident Studios in the centreof London and we got on really well and he asked me if I'd go and do some work for him
programming his studio at Townhouse and through Guy I met Alex Patterson from The Orb andAlex and I got on really well and Alex kind of asked me to co-write some stuff for The
(07:24):
Orb.
And so I sort of ended up accidentally joining the all that way and Alex and I did moreand more things together, started writing together.
And then he asked me if I'd tour with him.
So that was sort of my first exposure really.
But I never, I didn't really, you know, I'm not one those keyboard players who enjoysshowing off with insanely fast chops and that kind of thing.
(07:49):
I like to make the right sound at the right place and play the right thing and support themusic.
and so it was a long time really until anything much happened in terms of being aperformer i think the first big thing was that uh...
brian johnson from a cdc was was not with a cdc at the time and had an idea to to do a newalbum and star band and i think it was actually uh...
(08:17):
i believe it was going uh...
he suggested me as a keyboard player much to my surprise and i just happened to have a bitof free time
that week.
So I threw a Wurlitzer and I think another MIDI keyboard in my boot and took myself up toJohn Henry's and ended up jamming in a room full of fantastic musicians with Brian on lead
(08:42):
vocals.
That project didn't come to fruition.
think Brian was invited back to join ACDC.
I think the brothers decided they'd do something else.
And then a short while later Lee Harris came up with the idea of the sources.
And I'd been invited to play keyboards at Guy's 50th birthday party and he had a jam withloads of musicians coming along.
(09:10):
David Gilmore came along, Gary Kemp came along, all sorts of really interesting players.
But only one guy, he wanted to play the organ.
So that was my sort of baptism of fire.
remember David Gilmore sort of ambling up to me as we were about to launch into ArnoldLane and leading over and saying, you know, I've never played Arnold Lane with anybody
(09:34):
else but Rick before.
I hope you're all right.
Okay.
And no pressure.
And there is a 32 bar organ solo in the middle of this, isn't there?
Yeah, that's right.
Okay.
Yeah, I remember.
I really don't remember.
It's a complete blur.
I'm sure I made an absolute hash of it.
(09:55):
I'm sure it was an absolute car crash, but...
I mean, they're still speaking to me and I got to play keyboards with Nick and Gary andGuy and Lee.
um
Yeah, that's right.
Now I do want, I'm not going to let you get away out of the orb quite that early as well,because I'm a massive orb fan and love that music from sort of the 90s into the 2000s as
(10:20):
far as electronic music as well.
So obviously that's incredibly different from what you've done since and you've done awhole range of genres.
What was the learning curve for you with the orb?
As you said, you may not be wanting to do lots of soloing, but that's not necessarilycalled for.
in stuff like the orb.
just tell us about your experience with that.
Was that something new for you?
(10:42):
I was looking for a way to move live orb shows on from the way that previous collaboratorswith Alex had worked, which was essentially having a console on stage and mixing live,
sort of pretty much building a mini studio.
And that was around about the time that Ableton Live came out.
(11:04):
So I was wanting to make the orb experience for the keyboard player much more live.
and integrate Ableton Live and remixing on the fly along with also taking a keyboard onstage and playing some of the parts live or getting as close to the parts on the record as
(11:24):
I could.
And a lot of them were samples, so it was a question of recreating those samples withsynths live on stage.
So that was the route that I took with that.
And do you remember what you do remember what since you were using back then?
It the thing with the all live at the time was it it wasn't the kind of organization thatwas used to taking big keyboard rigs of backline out on stage, so I really had to dine out
(11:53):
on Ableton live and soft sense and and some controllers, so Yeah, it wasn't ideal for me.
It wasn't until the sources that I got to really play the way that I wanted to
But it was great fun and Alex is a really dear friend and a great person to be creativewith.
So as you mentioned with Source of Fuller Secrets, you've definitely got a much fullerkeyboard rig and you've got a whole palette of sounds.
(12:19):
So tell us about, I mean, you've alluded to Guy Pratt and David Gilmore.
I mean, I think I'm getting how you ended up joining Source of Fuller Secrets, but justtell us a little bit about the formation of that and how you got.
Great.
mean, it's a really, the way we did it was the really old fashioned way of forming a band.
mean, it really was the first, the first five people that we thought of.
(12:43):
Lee Harris became a friend of mine because Guy had him on board to help put together themusicians for his 50th birthday.
So I got to know Lee through that and we became good friends.
And then Lee came up with this idea and obviously
called round and I was in the on the call list and we talked about what we could possiblydo and it it really was just a question of saying well the only way we can take this
(13:10):
forward is if we can persuade Nick to join us in a in a rehearsal studio somewhere andjust thrash some stuff out and I think when I was first approached with the source for the
secrets thing my memory of it at least is that I think they were hoping that a much more
uh...
accomplished or famous people play a mic come along and that my role might be a lot moreto be doing the sonics the atmosphere is the samples that you know just a sort of beer a
(13:43):
studio ways on the corner of the stage making which isn't bps and and stuff but i decidedto bring along a you know at the digital ham and
having listens to stuff and realize that you rick was mostly playing you for fees as boxcontinentals and hammond on that material so i grabbed a new c two days of to bring along
(14:06):
to the rehearsal and and mostly played that and and it it seems to work and part from thefact that it was to be longer than anybody else in the band to set up but by the time i
was up and running and could hear something and yet no one seemed to be like
Get that guy out the room, he's hopeless.
(14:29):
Much to my amazement.
uh I think you're probably uh vastly underestimating your skills, but as you know, too,it's as much about the hang is the actual, uh, virtuosity.
I mean, you obviously fitted in well with, with the team.
What was your learning curve there though, Dom, as far as you, I mean, you obviously had afew runs on the board as far as being a player and producer, but what, you know, what was
(14:53):
a ramp up in rehearsal?
I think we're all faking it aren't we?
We've all got imposter syndrome and I've got it in space.
But it was interesting because the difference between the sources going on tour and whenFloyd played that original material is the massive change in technology that we have
(15:17):
available now.
but yet when you listen to those records particularly psychedelic stuff you know set thecontrols and that you know those tracks they were great sonic experiment as from the start
yet on stage i think the one thing that nick especially really enjoyed was theimprovisation aspect of what they did so for me it was really a question of trying to
(15:42):
build a keyboard rake and and mindset around the sense of organa all the keyboard soundsfor
for early Pink Floyd that allowed you to be very hands-on and very improvisational at thesame time as being able to provide a really wide range of different sounds and ambiences
and textures to fit in.
(16:03):
So at one moment you're soloing, the next moment you're providing ambience and texture,the next minute you're providing a piano backing or a rhythm backing or even just
providing the nuts and bolts of the chord of the song for the guitars to sit on top of.
And at the same time trying to do that without taking an enormous, you know studio-sizedkeyboard rig on stage something that that we could act that the backline crew could
(16:29):
actually cope with I think we're border with that
Yeah.
And what are you actually taking out Dom?
So what was the balance you found there?
Because as you can imagine, there are a million and one Pink Floyd tribute acts, includingan amazing one that might sometimes co-host who's devastated.
I've got to say he's not here tonight.
had a work conflict.
(16:50):
In Australia you have tribute bands better than anybody else I know I think.
It's probably slightly to do with your geography I reckon.
So what was the question again?
I got distracted.
I just purely, what is the rig that you do take out with Saucerful of Secrets?
It does give you that balance between not too overwhelmed.
I've got to massive credit to my tech, Bob Stewart, who came up with the idea becauseoriginally what I wanted to combine a board of effects and kind of semi-modular sound
(17:22):
sources so that I could both process keyboards and generate audio at the same time andreally mess things around and be able to control whether I'm sending or blending any
particular set of keyboards with that and then also to be able to add
digital effects as well for things that there wasn't room for in the racks of themautomatically it was kind of okay we're have to die now on some plugins here and the
(17:51):
solution we hit upon was main stage which other got a bit on and not very happy with uh...
but it's the only piece of software i did i know people will write in the comments belowsay no you should use this issue is that uh...
there are other things out there that would
that have that kind of routing and controllability, but they were a little bit out of mytechnical comfort zone.
(18:17):
I mean, I certainly looked into using Ableton, but, and Ableton would have been able to doit, but I was gonna have to program in, it's just dropped out of my head now.
Ableton has a proprietary plugin format that you can write your own code and plugins toget routing, and the name of it has just dropped out of my head for a minute, I'm sorry.
(18:37):
And I was sort of, went down the with it and got it working and then thought, do you knowwhat, if this falls over in the middle of a tour, I'm not going to remember how I did
this.
So Ableton was, so that went and we went back to main stage.
I'm not a fan of it, but it does, it does the job just about.
And then I have a Nord C2D and Nord.
(19:01):
nor do quite sweet and look after me uh...
i really enjoy that i thought it was a great bit of kit because it's three organs in oneand uh...
and uh...
you know and and and sins and all that kind of stuff and all the draw bars and two sets ofdoor you anybody watching this is a keyboard fan knows inside out uh...
then i wanted to choose analog sent that i thought would be super reliable unstable butalso really flexible and very hands-on
(19:28):
So I bought a subsequent 37, which was an update on the little fatty and an update on thesub 37.
And I'm super happy with that.
I still use it all the time in the studio and live.
It's a mini controller and a great sounding synth.
And then on the other side, I have a couple of controller keyboards.
One is a weighted piano, which I've actually just upgraded to a Nord stage four just totake the piano duties away from the laptop.
(19:58):
And then I have an SL Mark II, SL Mark III, in addition.
And again, I use a lot of gear from Novation and Focusrite, and the SL is great.
It's a controller.
I've got all my pads for doing drum things, and I've got all my samples up there, andsplits and faders for controlling stuff in Mainstage.
(20:22):
And then the floor is just a whole swag of...
pedals, controller pedals, most of which are ascends or blends or, you know, each one goesto a different.
And then on the effects board, I've got a Boss ES5 and a Boss ES8, the control, thinkthere's 20 or 30 pedals on there, which are just frozen because they're all things that I
(20:44):
can't find a plugin that would sound the same.
And it's also hands on, you know, hands on control.
So I get a lot of time, I get some just stand up and twiddle knobs.
No, Bri, an overview, thank you.
And just going back to main stage, and I'm a main stage user and I agree with you totally.
I'm never a hundred percent comfortable with it.
What is it you particularly dislike about it?
(21:06):
Do you worry about reliability, just how difficult it is to set up?
They seem to have forgotten their professional user base.
I mean, for understandable commercial reasons, whilst it is sort of loosely based oneMagic logic that we remember and love, that functionality is now buried so deeply behind
all the pretty pictures and shortcuts for, you know, press one button, have instant technononsense for, you know, for...
(21:37):
for the quite genuine and and perfectly acceptable world of semi professionals or oramateurs i know i think link but why can't we have a some professional software
Yeah.
Hear, I'm hearing you.
And just on that, I mean, what are the soft synths that you are using?
mean, it sounds like you've got pretty much most stuff covered with hardware, but there'sobviously, I mean, you mentioned about samples.
(22:02):
So aside from samples, are there some soft synths that are fundamental to your work?
Not really, to be honest with you.
There are a few things that crop up every now and again for certain things.
I still like Spectrosonics Omnisphere.
I think that's a great little tool for quickly getting pads.
Particularly now that it's got so many really nice emulations of analog gear, it does thatnicely, but it's heavy on the processor.
(22:30):
I think there's a little bit of Native Instruments Massive on one of the tracks.
Do know what, without actually going back in and looking, those are the two that spring tomind.
I tend to use little Spitfire strings, that kind of stuff.
em And what's your redundancy Dom?
So I mean, do you have a second laptop if things fail or you've got enough coverage on thehardware?
(22:53):
Obviously samples would be an issue, but you've got enough coverage on the hardware.
If it goes down, you can survive.
This is my nightmare.
This is my absolute production nightmare because, um, yeah, I designed the rig and thenour production team took one look at it and went, so what happens when the laptop crashes?
And I said, well, it all goes off until I restart it.
(23:16):
Um, so they said, all right, well, you'll, you'll need to a completely redundant system.
So I basically have, apart from the physical keyboards, there is a completely redundantsystem.
that operates all the time.
So there's two laptops.
There's two Focusrite Red 8 Pre's.
There's, I use, up until now I've been using DI boxes and switches by a company calledOrchid.
(23:44):
And Peter there used to make them all, they were all hand built and incredibly good valueand they sound amazing.
As far as I'm aware, I think he's pretty much semi-retired now.
so i've got a horrible feeling that on the next or i might move over to radials for thatside but yet no this there's a completely redundant system
(24:05):
Yeah, no, that's amazing.
Yeah, the radio KL8 sounds like an ideal solution for you with the switch over for laptopsand stuff.
But yeah, radio, you know, I'm a fan, but um that's amazing.
don't think I have, mean, aside from any highlights over the time with Source of Secretsas far as gigs you've played that have really stood out for you or, and also I'd probably
(24:27):
throw in the train wreck question here.
So has something gone spectacularly wrong that you can laugh about?
a couple there is there are a couple of things I did have a slow motion train wreck thatwent on over about four or five gigs where originally I had an overheim MC 1000 controller
(24:48):
keyboard with weighted keys which I've had for years and I really liked and One night Iwas playing fearless, which is piano led and I'm like well hang on a minute.
I'm playing
I'm playing the piano and I'm getting loads of stuck notes and they're coming a second ortwo or three seconds after I'm playing them.
So over the next five gigs this kept happening and Bob was tearing his hair out looking atthe computers trying to work out where the stuck notes were, know, did we not have enough
(25:17):
RAM, were the computers too hot?
We couldn't figure out, but then it was happening on both machines simultaneously.
And finally, after about four or five gigs, we realized that it was the keyboard itself.
And it was after the fifth gig where I was playing the piano solo, I think, either inFearless or what was the other one we used to play that had a piano solo in it?
We've dropped it now.
And that was me happily soloing along.
(25:40):
And all of sudden there was a moment of silence and then the world's most enormousclusterfuck of notes, as if I'd just fallen on top of the piano.
Oh, yeah, it sounds like some-
Yeah, the keyboard was, don't know, Bob will tell you, the keyboard was buffering somestuff up or storing stuff and then squirting it all out later.
I was really tempted to get up, throw the whole keyboard rig on the floor and march offstage in a hissy fit.
(26:08):
luckily, just doing side eye with my tech in the wings, like
And then going, there's enough to kind of keep me, keep me there.
But, but the other one was a bit of a classic.
If anyone's seen the show at the beginning of echoes, the stage goes into complete andutter darkness.
(26:29):
There's a, there's a total blackout.
And then I have to play the ping, the sonar ping, the piano through Leslie speaker.
And one night, you know, there's totally, we go to
We've a blackout, there's total silence, the audience is like, oh, we know what's comingnext.
It's echoes.
And I went to play that B and I just, I could see nothing.
(26:52):
just somehow, I just looked at the keyboard and I literally was just reaching into thedark.
And I think, and I just managed to play a really interesting jazz chord of I think threesemitones all next to each other instead of the ping.
Nice.
So for every geek since then, at the beginning of Echoes, Bob crawls across the stage onall fours, commando style, appears under my keyboard with a little gooseneck lamp and
(27:22):
places it over B8.
The keyboard!
Wow.
That is dedication.
He's a great.
I love it.
Amazing stories.
Thanks, Don.
And I will ask one last question, which was, there some songs for you that youparticularly enjoy playing out of that amazing catalog?
You know, what,
really keep you interested to this day.
(27:43):
I've played in and every show, there's always a song in the set list that you go, it'sthis one.
All right, just buckle up and get through it.
And the thing I love about The Saucers is there isn't one of those in the set, not asingle one.
We kind of have a rule in the band that if anybody in the band doesn't like a song, itgets dropped.
(28:06):
It does make putting the set list together murder sometimes, and it can take it.
lot of debate amongst the five of us.
there are moments that are a bit special.
Obscured by Clouds is just great.
It's one of those early songs that Rick really let the synthesizers breathe on it and youget to be epic and expansive.
(28:28):
And Echoes is another really special moment.
one of those, it's very weird.
The first time we played it, I started and played the
paying in the first little bit of the song is is me on my own which is lovely and iremember just playing these are pictures of the keyboard my rick played and then looking
at the front of the audience and there were one going to women sitting right in front ofme absolutely pouring with tears and i was like shit what's going on what's the better so
(29:01):
i looked at it looks across the barry are and had a security so he comes out of what whatwhat what's the best
What's going wrong?
These people in the front row are sick.
They're not well.
Can somebody go down and check what's gone wrong?
They're just really enjoying themselves.
They're really emotional.
Oh my god, amazing.
(29:24):
See, that's your imposter syndrome kicking in again, Dom.
That's what that was.
I love it.
And you just raised a really interesting point and this is obviously a faulty assumption.
I think it's amazing that the five of you determine your set list within reason and whatsongs and if someone doesn't like a song that drops, I'd assume because obviously Nick
being one of the original members that it might've been, and I don't mean this in anegative way, but more of a dictatorship as far as here's what we're doing.
(29:50):
it sounds-
It's great that you some good collaboration think it's fair to say, and I don't think Nickwould disagree, that he just really enjoys playing in a band.
I think that he misses, I think he misses that period of Floyd where they got on reallysuper well and they collaborated as a band, as a four piece or a short while as a five
piece.
And he's really a collaborative player.
(30:11):
I think it's also the essence of his drumming.
He doesn't, he's not one of those drummers or percussionists that plays
you know insanely crazy fast fills but he's unbelievably musical and what he loves isreacting to what everybody else is playing and supporting the music with those you know
those from normally melodic tom fills and and i think that really is his jam and so that'swhy it was the first five people we got in the room you got on together and it's the same
(30:39):
five people now and and you know we had an issue i won't tell the story but we did have anissue on the first tour where was
possible that one of the five of us wouldn't be able to make the shows in Canada and Wesort of we huddled together in the pre-production rehearsals.
We were already in Washington by that point in Washington State and we huddled together asa band and so what are we gonna do if we can't take one of us to To Canada now can
(31:05):
somebody else cover the parts and the answer was yes, but no man left behind It's all fiveof us or none of us.
and it's it's that kind of band
Gary and Guy have been friends for years and years and years.
They're very close mates.
I've known Guy since 1999 and we've become very, close as well.
He's become a really good friend and so has Lee over these past few years.
(31:30):
And that's what makes it a lot of fun.
think that's why when you come to see us, we look like we're having fun on stage becausewe just love being together.
We love playing together.
That's right.
No, amazing.
No, thank you for that.
Now I am desperate to get onto Killer Star as well, because this was a revelation.
I'll admit that I was unaware of Killer Star until doing research and it's been anabsolute revelation.
(31:54):
though, well, I shall let you talk about it.
Dom, tell us about what Killer Star is.
It's not my project.
This was started by Rob Fleming and James Sedge.
And I didn't know Rob or anything about him or James before they approached me.
ah But James had been writing stuff and playing in bands for years.
And he also has a record label, Vintage League Music, which is based both in the US and inthe UK.
(32:19):
And he puts out lot of great indie music on there as well.
He's an absolute music lover and a great songwriter.
and both listed to trust as well when we told and managing to take chunks of people withthat david bally association with us and it works it work great and i i only got to be
involved because uh...
(32:41):
robin james came to see a source of a show that they came to the royal abo all and andthey they'd literally pains me a message uh...
through through a website
and it was one of those things where actually I was on holiday at the time and justdecided to go through all the junk mail I had and I thought that that one's interesting, I
(33:02):
wonder if that's real or not and James and I got in contact and the rest is history.
But yeah, to play with those guys is incredible, absolutely incredible.
Yeah, and so from a keyboard viewpoint, I can't avoid asking.
We've had the absolute privilege of having Mike Garson on the show.
We talked to him for about 90 minutes.
He was amazing.
tell us.
(33:24):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So tell us about the sort of interaction there and even playing live, you know, how youguys worked out what you're doing.
Yeah, I'm just fascinated.
The thing is the piano.
So generally speaking, he does piano duties and I do anything that's not piano duties,really.
(33:44):
But it's still one of those bands where we are playing relatively small venues.
So it's loud on stage.
We don't have in ears all around.
There's still wedges around the place.
it's, from my point of view, it's...
it's still very much in the process of being refined and each gig gets better and better.
We're putting out an EP of the show we did in New York in November and I think that's thebest performance the band have done so far.
(34:11):
Yeah, no, it's absolutely amazing.
mean, I'm assuming it's the 100 Club one, the Children of Revolution single that's beenreleased.
I mean, I'm just in a cover band, Dom, but I've already sent that to our band mate sayingthat's how that should be played.
You know, we should be playing that.
So I'll linking to all that, but it is absolutely amazing.
(34:31):
I assume you managed to drill Mike for some anecdotes around um playing with David.
I know he gave us lots of great stories and I can...
I haven't actually had time to sit down with Mike and to drill him for anecdotes.
We've had so many other things music-wise to talk about.
On the odd occasion, we've had time out of rehearsals before a gig to go and grab a biteor a glass of beer together.
(34:55):
We're too busy talking keyboards, piano and music.
That's good.
Also, I don't know about you, but I find it difficult when you meet people who
Whose work you're a big fan of apart from anything else and they've played with some ofyour heroes Literally it it's sometimes quite difficult to find the right moment to start
(35:20):
Plugging them for stories, you know, know people who are better at it than I am
No, you're right.
There's a difference between being a colleague and a fanboy.
I know people who manage to balance that very well, much better than I do.
I my friend Guy has got more anecdotes than I've ever had breakfasts.
(35:41):
But you know, stick to your knitting, Grandma, that's not my thing.
But if you want anecdote, he's your man and he gets some out of everyone.
Yeah, he does.
I've watched some of the interviews with guys.
Well, yeah, look, he's an amazing raconteur.
That's for sure.
No, that's great.
Thank you.
So yeah, Killerstar will definitely be linking to and I don't I know we're a little bitshort on time, but I was also keen to talk about sort of even other projects you involved
(36:07):
with like Belker and Strolke, Just Jack and stuff like that.
Any comments you make about that stuff from sort of the early 2000s and
So this is the other thing that somehow has disappeared into the annals of history becauseat the same time I had a band with Alex called High Frequency Bandwidth and we put out
quite a lot of stuff with that project.
(36:27):
And at that period of time I had a studio in Ealing Film Studios and I was doing a lot offilm and TV work and we were kind of making some bread and butter doing television
advertising as well and my partner in crime in that business was a guy called AnthonyAdams, Ant Adams.
he's a fantastic musician really great composer as well and a genius at that same musicand and covering other genres and we both had a lot of of so hip-hop beats and and jazz
(36:57):
and the idea came up will that when i was also spare downtime let's let's write somethat's right some chains together and and the belton stroke robin came out came out of it
but it was at the time when no music sales weren't
great record companies didn't have a huge amount of money to promote.
weren't really in a position to tour.
(37:17):
So it's one of those little hidden gems that I'm still quite proud of, Belkron Stravko.
And high frequency bandwidth sort of suffered a similar kind of thing.
I'm still really pleased with that record.
We had a fantastic guest vocalist on it in form of Dynamax, MC Dynamax.
uh...
is back out in the states now and yeah it was just a really nice period and that's you hada great vibe and we had some really cool some really cool people around
(37:45):
Yeah, nice.
No, thank you.
And then I do want you mentioned film and TV again, and I know you've got quite a, acredit list there as far as film, TV and gaming.
So mean, two parts of that.
Uh, what got you into that in the first place, but also the challenges and you mentionedsync licensing and stuff as well, how I believe that's dropped off just even in the last
(38:07):
year due to AI and a bunch of other challenges.
It's changed a lot and my role in it has changed a lot.
My approach to it, which I think in the end led me to not having quite as much work as Iwould have liked to have done, has a lot to do with the fact that I hate dining out on
presets and everything being in the box.
(38:32):
just, if anything feels too easy to me, I will find a way to make it more difficult.
and to make it more creative and more interesting and to have, you know, fewer samples,fewer quick VST fixes to things in an industry that was developing in a way that other
(38:54):
composers were able to, you know, if they got a brief for something, they'd knock outseven, eight, nine ideas.
And commissioners love that.
Whereas I would say, no, this is what I really think you should have.
And, you know,
I would play guitar on it and I would play bass on it and I would put up my drum kit andmic it up and play drums on it and then I would ask players to come in and put strings on
(39:19):
it or whatever it, you know, whatever it needed.
And that always is my approach to everything really.
And I'm not very good at that stack it high, flog it cheap, which I...
Sorry, that sounds like I'm being really bitchy about other composers.
I'm not.
I just don't have that...
know that ability to take one brief and knock out seven eight ideas for it for somebody tochoose from.
(39:47):
I'd much rather work the most successful things I've done, but when I've been working witha director um or creative lead, he said, look, I trust your your instinct on this.
What should it be?
And OK, then we do go back and make changes, but always a development of the originalidea.
Usually.
I mean, there are times when you sit back and you're um
(40:08):
you you'd be your quality control circuit kicks in and you say no that needs stitching andwe'll start again but i much prefer working you know really closely with with a creative
to if you're doing stuff that's audio visual and this is why ended up in in video games ifind i find those guys are really easy to work with and are really happy to have creative
(40:33):
discussions and to let people take ownership of their part of the project
And I think it's the thing I love most about that video game work as I mentioned beforethe interview I've kind of had the last six months off So it's a funny time to do an
interview and talk about what I'm doing at the moment because I'm just restarting all thatBut I actually do a lot of work with a company that I helped found I'm a founding member
(40:56):
called snap finger click and We do really nice social gaming.
We work quite a few projects Ongoing with them and they're a super team of people
and make really fun games the kind of stuff that is not a kid in the bedroom just allnight staring shooting people in the face and they're much more collaborative and that's
(41:17):
that's a really fun area to work with and i have been talking to a couple of other studiosabout some bigger triple-a style projects which to have which i haven't been able to take
off uh...
and start work on the last six months but i'm hoping there's gonna be some more of thatbecause i quite enjoyed doing
orchestral and drum crossover stuff and that kind of dramatic score and sound.
(41:41):
Are you finding it's still too early days that AI is heavily impacting that morecollaborative creative stuff?
AI has the ability to recreate and copy anything which is very generic.
I mean the only hope I have for composers and producers like me is that because we'realways pushing the boundary and trying to make things more difficult and trying to be more
(42:04):
creative and come up with new sounds, new ways of doing things that the sort of work thatcomposers and producers like I do is more difficult for AI to copy.
But it is...
It is a serious problem and like all these things, I'm waiting for the public to pick upon what companies like Spotify in particular and Daniel Ek in person are trying to do both
(42:31):
to our creative industries and to our military and to our wider world.
You have a Spotify account, whether you pay a monthly fee or whether you put up with theadverts,
you are directly contributing to the destruction of music as we know it and the creativeindustries and you're directly contributing to the development of AI and warfare as well.
(42:55):
I think that that is a despicable way to run technology.
And I really think that consumers have to have a choice and to step away from that.
Given that you're sort of, let's say you're halfway through your career, you know, maybeyou've got another 20 or 30 years in the industry if you can cope that long, Dom, what
advice would you give to aspiring musicians who are just starting out and trying toestablish themselves in what's now an increasingly challenging industry?
(43:21):
that's really difficult i think it's very difficult in the sense that for a while musiccease to be something that people pay for uh...
that we're coming out the other side of that in that people are now putting their hands intheir pockets to pay for subscription services but we've got a long battle ahead of us to
challenge the way they suscription services distribute that income and and that goes forall of them not to spotify uh...
(43:50):
But the one piece of advice I would say is that you just, you've got to be flexible andyou've got to be able to turn your hand to all sorts of different things.
And I think problem solving is, the, you know, it's the key thing.
You know, if ever you get an opportunity to do something, don't ever say you can't do it.
Just sit down and figure out your way to do it.
(44:10):
And that is why, you know, I've ended up with a career where if it's to do with audiopretty much, you know, once you've invested in your
your studio your setup even if it's just a laptop that's going to be expensive andinterface and i will do anything you know i'd i'd do sound design for video games uh...
for snapping a click i still do will record voiceover and and that kind of stuff for themit's tedious but some someone's got to do it that anything i've been asked to do you know
(44:42):
you big big gulp
and that kind of weird pit in your stomach of, my god, how am going to do this?
And then sit down and figure out how you can do it.
mean, if you've got, if you've got ears and some musical skills and that's your, you know,that's your, you know, that's your jam, figure it out.
Yeah.
No, great guidance.
Thank you.
And we also ask all our guests to tag a keyboard player.
(45:05):
So is there a keyboard player out there, Dom, that you've admired that you would actuallylike to find out more about their story?
I didn't get any prior notice of this.
players that I'm really interested in are synthesists who've done really interestingthings with using keyboards to create new types of music.
(45:26):
So I've always been massively inspired by, well, know, Vangelis is Jean-Michel Ja, IsaiahTomita, Thomas Dolby, absolutely.
Yes.
but there's a lot of people use his chops i really admire but they're not players thatuh...
whose jobs i'm ever gonna steal and i've had an absolute brain farce which is reallyhorrible if the if i ever meet the man he'll kill me for this the guy places you know
(45:55):
quite as play with you know
Matt Johnson.
Oh yeah.
We've, we've, we've had, yeah, we've, we've actually had the pleasure pre video days.
We've had the pleasure.
I had few before he passed away and my number was passed over so I got to spend a
(46:34):
reasonable amount of time with rick on the last projects on sadly unfinished he wasworking on but he is piano style and at his way of interjecting jazz voicings into rock
and ambient music which is quite incredible i mean absolutely incredible he had a realknowledge and understanding of the way people at miles davis put together harmony and put
(47:00):
back into what he was doing for pink floyd and
I think without Richard on those records, Pink Floyd would never have been the band theywere.
And the fact that he was the quiet one and he didn't scream and shout and push himself tothe front means that he's chronically overlooked as an artist and as a composer.
(47:25):
just some of the chord sequences he came up with are monstrous.
and even even going back to source of the songs also secrets and that is that is justinsane and i you know i still spend some every now and again sitting down trying to
analyze that and think so how do you decide that that is the movement you're make and yethe was he was phenomenal absolutely from a little and a big influence but it's because
(47:53):
he's all been playing and his piano player
Absolutely.
No, yes.
No, thank you.
And we're onto our second last question.
This is one I did warn you about, which is the Desert Island disc.
So if you have to rattle off five albums that have had a big impact on you, what wouldthey be?
Here's a strange one, which definitely should be in my five Des Island discs, Money Mark'sKeyboard Repair, the original version.
(48:14):
Money Mark, who was the keyboard player with the Beastie Boys.
if you haven't heard, I think the original has been deleted from most streaming servicesbecause he re-recorded it and nice seeded it up.
But the first version was a fantastically lo-fi recorded at home on what sounds like acassette deck in one take practically.
(48:36):
or the very most a Tascam 4 track or something like that.
That's an awesome album.
I love it.
Very unfashionably or this is very uncool, it's very uncool, but I got into Pink Floydbecause of Dark Side of the Moon and I won't have it said that it isn't their best piece
(48:59):
of work ever even though I don't get to play it.
I love all the other stuff and I love playing the stuff that
led up to it uh...
but i think it stands out amongst their back catalog by a country mile and and i know thati should say i'm it's a something much more obscure by them and you know uh...
(49:20):
i'd love to see a book tells you i love metal uh...
i love the source for the secrets and i don't know about my sorry uh...
say but but i do i'm on call i'm sorry
I've got two.
I'm just yeah.
No, it's great.
Am I allowed a classical one?
I mean am I allowed to say that I'm going back and listening to Adagio for Strings bySamuel Barber and I'll never forgive whoever it was who decided to put a dance beat behind
(49:50):
it and play it all on synthesizers.
Who was that?
Who was it?
I can't remember but I know what you mean.
I know the version you mean.
my ears.
That hurts my ears almost as much as the fact that I was sitting in a bar in New York acouple of nights ago and I heard a country and western version of Comfortably Numb.
Also, whoever did that should apologize.
(50:12):
All the other artists whose albums I absolutely adore as well.
But I'm trying to think of ones that are synth heavy.
um
Yeah, no, well done.
No, great job.
And our very last question, Dom, is what we call a quick fire 10.
So just 10 really short and sharp questions with 10 really short and sharp answers.
So first album you recall hearing as a child had an impact on you or you remember.
(50:38):
What's the most important pre-gig ritual for you?
So let's use Sauce Fillers Secrets as the band.
What do you need to do to feel settled?
I a glass of white wine in honor of Rick Wright.
Always, last thing I do before I go on stage, just a third of a glass.
Rick always had glass of wine before he went on stage.
I always have a third of a glass of white wine.
If you hadn't been a musician, Dom, what do you think your career choice would have been?
(51:02):
I'll my favorite answer that question was was Peter Kraut.
Somebody once said to him, if you hadn't been a footballer, what would you have been?
And he said, a virgin.
uh I have no idea.
was one of those things where I just really had had no choice.
My my dad, who I lost quite recently, never did what he really wanted to do for a job inhis life.
(51:25):
I think he'd have been really happy in something like motor racing as an engineer.
And he didn't.
And I always said,
I want to be much happier than my dad and therefore I want to do what I want to do for aliving.
I want my passion to be my job.
the answer is if I wasn't a musician, unemployed.
(51:48):
Yeah, or a virgin or both.
So...
That's right!
There's your next project named on.
You can get that for me for um free.
tour...
favourite tour you've ever done, if that's possible.
would favorite, favorite tour.
to be honest with you, it was the 2023 SourceFull did a short, fairly short European tour.
(52:16):
And in it we did Pompeii, Matero, uh just these amazing amphitheaters in Italy, which werejust, yeah, phenomenal.
I think that was
some of the most fun I've had.
Much easier to tell you about the worst tours I've ever done, but anyway.
(52:36):
I love playing in Italy because we get such a diverse crowd there, I have to say.
But one of the most interesting things was on our 2021 tour, if I've got two minutes, wewere actually booked to play in Russia.
The Special of Secrets were booked to play the Kremlin in Moscow and the Grand Theatre inSt.
(52:57):
Petersburg.
Suddenly the president of that country turned out to be the world's biggest cunt and so weimmediately decided not to go there Why something because he's got competition now as well
a lot of competition but at the time he was head and shoulders above everybody else Wecancelled immediately cancelled a big chunk of the tour and we ended up playing Estonia
(53:22):
Latvia and Lithuania instead and that was absolutely fascinating because
those countries were banned from hearing Pink Floyd and were banned from hearing anypopular rock and roll music until after Perestroika, until the 80s.
so their approach to music is, popular music is all new.
(53:47):
Pink Floyd isn't old to them, it's new because they weren't allowed to hear it.
So the reaction of those crowds was incredible.
We were kind of...
playing this fifty year old music but as far as they were concerned it was contemporarybecause they've been banned from hearing it in up until relatively recently so
Yeah, that's an amazing pick.
(54:08):
I do want to say we are very swearing supportive on this podcast.
Swearing is not an issue at all.
And I'd like to congratulate you as the first guest that's ever dropped the C-bomb.
So that there you go.
You've broken some new ground there.
That's fine.
No issue at all.
a corporate meeting with some very senior people at a very big video game company inAmerica and yeah, the reaction was bad.
(54:37):
Definitely not a bad reaction here.
um A favourite music documentary or movie, Dom, that you'd
I told you that I love Dark Side of the Moon, so everyone knows I'm not cool and so I'veprobably watched the Beatles documentary about seven times.
This is the letter B one, the whole eight hours.
Yep.
(54:57):
Yep.
Good, good pick.
uh Name one thing you'd like to see invented that would make your life as a keyboardplayer easier.
audio.
No, you're absolutely right.
no, I agree.
And last but not least, your favourite non-musical activity or hobby, what keeps you saneoutside of music?
cooking for people.
(55:18):
Yeah, that's my thing.
I'm messing about on boats, but I'm not really wealthy enough to have the amount of boatplaying time I'd really like.
yeah, if I'm not on a boat, cooking for people or cooking on a boat.
uh
(55:38):
right.
I cannot thank you enough.
It's been absolutely amazing.
I know you need to duck off in a minute.
So I can't thank you enough for taking the time.
I know Salsa Full of Secrets, you toured Australia only in the last couple of years,didn't you?
I didn't get to see it, but yeah.
So hopefully you're back at some stage for what you've
we'll see.
(55:59):
I I guess everybody will understand that Nick kind of feels that if we do go out again,we'd like it to be kind of easy and a little less travel heavy.
Yeah.
And I would love to be down.
I mean, I'd like to do New Zealand because my mum was from New Zealand, so I'm half Kiwi,so I've never got to play there.
(56:22):
So if anybody wants to hire me to do an Australia and New Zealand tour.
I'm up for it.
I've got one New Zealand transport I'm allowed in.
Yeah, look, it sounds like a good outing for the unemployed virgins.
But no, Dom, thank you so much.
um Yeah, can't thank you enough for your insights.
Definitely.
Yes, it's a real pleasure to talk.
Let me know when it pops out and you have to put the parental advisory on it.
(56:55):
And there we have it.
I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I enjoyed recording it with Dom.
Huge thanks to Dom for his time.
He's had one hell of a few months and it's hugely appreciated him spending the time togive us his insights.
uh I just wanna give a quick shout out to our gold and silver supporters.
So the amazing Mike from midnightmastering.com.
(57:15):
If you've got your own creations and want a great job on having them mixed and mastered,then Mike's your guy.
Do check out midnightmastering.com.
The amazing Dave Bryson team at the uh the musicplay.com forums and particularly thekeyboard corner.
um As I always say, being there over 20 years and proud to do so is such a valuable wealthof information and just a nice community.
(57:41):
The amazing Tammy Katcha from Tammy's Musical Studio.
Thank you Tammy for your ongoing and long-term support.
It's hugely appreciated.
And last but definitely not least, the brilliant Dewey Evans.
musician extraordinaire from the Sunnylander Wales.
Thank you, Derry, as always for your support as well.
If you'd like to keep in touch or give us feedback, we remain on all the socials, soFacebook and Instagram and Blue Sky when I think to use it, even on TikTok here and there,
(58:10):
um and also good old fashioned email at editor at keyboardchronicles.com.
We love hearing your feedback.
And we also do get lots of feedback on our YouTube channel.
We try and respond to each and every one of those pieces of feedback.
So yeah, that's always appreciated.
So again, thank you.
We'll be back in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime, keep on playing.
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