Geoff Downes Quotes

A lot of the early Washed Out material was done on a couple of synthesizers that did most of the work, but that's the great thing about synths - you can recreate sounds or make an entire record with just one piece of gear.

By the time I got to building synthesizers, I had perhaps 20 years' experience building electronic musical instruments.

I think it was inevitable that I get into synthesizer music. I always wanted to deal with sound more than anything else. I couldn't get the sounds I wanted out of the piano.

Analog, electronic, whatever it happens to be, I simply love and adore literally every aspect of making music.

I agree with the rest of the band, that a truly synthesized sound isn't really what I would want to go for.

It is at least 10 times more difficult to get a good synthesiser sound than on an acoustic instrument.

I've been really excited about some new cutting edge electronic music and technology.

I think the indie-rock world is very creative. They're always looking for something new, and I think of all the instruments we have in the world, the ones that are the most creative and interesting are the electronic ones. There are so many sounds and plug-ins you can use.

I spent most of the year in the studio for electronic music at a radio station in Cologne or in other studios where I produced new works with all kinds of electronic apparatus.

I'm also very impressed with the best people in experimental electronic world, like Peta and Eckart Aillers and Finez and Jim O'Rourke and Oren Umbarci and Francesco Lopez. Most of them use the computer as their main instrument.

It's great if you can afford to carry a string section on the road with you, but most people are used to the idea of just a keyboard player creating those string sounds.

I think I was first to do live performances on a modern electronic sound synthesizer.

I got on a bit of a rollercoaster looking into how Herbie Hancock used to make his tunes, and I remember a picture of Jean-Michel Jarre at one of his concerts and seeing the Memorymoog. When I heard the sound it I was like, 'Arrrgh, I really need that.'

My first synthesizer was the VCS3. I got it in Bristol in the late Sixties, long before Pink Floyd used them. I had to sell an acoustic guitar and an old reel-to-reel tape recorder to raise the money. You can do fantastic things with modern computers, but you cannot use them in the same intuitive, spontaneous way you can a VCS3.

I made an electronic record in the vein of Cluster. I was programming synthesizers and drum machines and that sort of thing.

There is nothing wrong in electronic music or synthesised music.

I took to the synthesizer. My cousin had some synthesizers, and I'd always make stuff on those things.

All of those 10cc 'Not in Love'-type synthetic choir sounds on 'Replica' are all from the Omnisphere. We used a lot of that.

It's been very hard for the guitar as a serious synthesizer to compete with keyboards.

Everyone making electronic music has the same tool kits and templates. You listen, and you feel like it can be done on an iPad. If everybody knows all the tricks, it's no more magic.

I don't do that much sampling. I create all my own sounds.

Somehow, magically, I've become an electronic musician, and I have a recording studio that looks like the bridge of the Enterprise.

I like tinkering with the tribe beat boxes and love using Reason as a beefed up beat box.

I get some heat for what English people call 'overproduction.' I don't think my older stuff was overproduced, but I do think that sound has dated.

We incorporate various electronic devices - the echo plugs and things like that. Actually, all we're trying to do is make that sound musical. As opposed to just making sounds, we do musical things with them.