Oliver Wakeman is a keyboardist, composer and arranger. His most high-profile work has been as a touring member of Yes from 2008 to 2011, following on in the footsteps of his father Rick.
His latest release with his co-writer Clive Nolan is Tales By Gaslight, a three-disc set including re-releases of the Jabberwocky and Hound Of The Baskervilles albums, together with a new album Dark Fables.
Keys Review’s Andy Hughes had a chat with Oliver about all things keyboard, how to expand your set-up, and advice from his famous dad.
It has to be a help for any professional musician, having a dad who is also a pro player and can offer some advice gained from long experience. Did Rick offer you much advice as you were making your way into the profession as a musician?
Actually, we don’t often talk about music together, but the best piece of advice he gave me, and I am happy to pass it on, is – play anywhere you can with anyone, no matter what the setting or the musical style.
Growing up I had plenty of time to get through all the car crash moments that you have when you are first getting to grips with playing on stage, either a solo musician, or with a band. I joined a band when I was still at school, everyone else was about ten years older than me. They’d pick me up after school, we’d go and play a gig, they’d drop me off, I’d go to bed and get up for school the next day.
Learning with older musicians did teach me a lot, I learned about how to follow the bass player, watch his fingers, pick up the pace of the music, listen to what the guitarist is doing. Sometimes, in some settings, you can’t always hear everything that’s going on, you have to learn visual cues and follow the plot that way.
When did you realise that you were good enough to take on playing keyboards as a profession?
I think it was when I watched other players, and realised that a lot of the styles I was seeing and hearing were learned from previous players, and I decided that I wanted to do something a little bit differently. My dad has always had a bit of a ‘Watch this then …!’ approach, which I think you need with a band of musicians as good as Yes are. I found that the more I improvised, the more I found I had a knack for it. I listened to Yes growing up, and when I got the chance to join them on tour, I didn’t find it too hard to pick up the material, and how it fitted into a live setting, and that was thanks to all the experience I had growing up playing different styles solo, and in duos, trios, bands and so on.
When you were learning and growing up, were the any stumbling blocks where you have to figure out how to get past a certain stage to move onto the next stage?
I never really felt as though I got stuck with anything. I just loved playing, I never ever got bored with it. I worked in a bank, and I lived not far from where I worked, so I would nip home at lunch time and practice. I really loved playing so the perseverance you need to get to a professional level was there in place. Plus, I could see where it could lead by seeing what my dad had done in his career. I have never thought of myself as being that much like him, but someone videoed me playing from a side angle, and when I looked, I could see a definite similarity between us in our hand positions as we play.
You started on piano at home, as most keyboard players do – what was the next keyboard you had?
It was a very early Korg SAS20, one of the early starter keyboards with rhythms built into it. That was a sixty-one-key keyboard. A friend of mine had a Roland 303, that was a fifty-key model, and it was bright pink. So I borrowed that to take out to gigs with me. Next, I got a Yamaha V50 which was one of the first synthesisers that Yamaha produced. A friend of mine who is now my keyboard tech programmed a really cool Moog sound into it for me, he is much better at that kind of thing that I am.
That was my set-up for my first gig which was in a pub. I was terrified! Mainly because the Korg had got damaged, and when it played, it was nearly a semitone lower in pitch than it should have been. That meant that I had to remember only to play it on a solo, if it had come in alongside anyone else it would have sounded dreadful so I had to be careful not to get too carried away and start playing away on it without thinking.
The other major issue for me was that I realised that I didn’t have a keyboard stand, which was something of a problem. In the end I borrowed my mum’s ironing board, which doubled as my first keyboard stand. At the end of the gig, which I really enjoyed, someone gave me twenty quid and told me there was a pint behind the bar for me. That was it, I had found what I wanted to do with my life.
Now more than ever, there is such a vast range of sounds and effects available to the keyboard player – how do you go about narrowing down that huge variety into the choices you will use on your albums and stage performances?
For a long time, I used a lot of keyboards that were current at the time I was writing and recording for any specific project. My collaborator Clive Nolan always had everything new, he was always keen on having whatever the latest innovation was. Clive had the Roland JV-1080 and then the JV-2080 with the expansion cards, I used those for a time. I had a Korg T1 which I saved every penny I had to buy it, I loved that and I’ve still got it now.
I had a series of Yamaha keyboards as well, and I made sure that I got to know them very well over time, understanding what they would do for me. I got a Korg 01W for orchestral sounds and used that a lot, and then I learned how to swap sounds out, and see what worked with what. My dad never opened the doors to his studio and said – there you are, have a go on that lot, but that was good because I was never overwhelmed with options. If I saved up for something, I made sure I explored it really thoroughly and got to know it really well, and I think that’s a good thing to do if you are a keyboard player.
My son is fifteen and he is learning to play and is mad on as many sounds as he can find, and he is always on at me to download more and more sounds. I keep advising him to work with what he has now, because if you always look for different sounds, you will never really get to understand any of them individually, and what you can do with them in terms of creating the right sounds for the right pieces.
To me, that’s part of the fun of composing. Start with your basic track, then press a button, see what you get, if you like it, work it in, if not, then maybe it will work on something else, so make a note of the sound so you can go back to it another day.
I understood that I had enough keyboards and sound options for what I do, and not to get distracted with always looking for more, but to learn to be creative with what I had already.
Do you have a big keyboard set up now?
As you know, fashions change, and I have seen a lot of keyboard players really slimming their rigs down, some have just one keyboard and a laptop, and they plug in and go. It’s great for transport, just a couple of things to carry, and it’s easy to set up and break down really quickly for gigs.
When I joined Yes, I understood that part of the appeal of the band on stage is the spectacle of it all. They don’t want to look at my section of the stage and see one keyboard and a laptop, they want to see banks of keys because that is what they expect. I had a Korg CX3 for the organ parts, a Korg T1 for the Rhodes piano sounds, and a Yamaha P150 piano which I have had for years. It has built-in speakers which obviously I couldn’t hear over the PA, but I like the vibration that they give the keyboard when I am playing it, it feels familiar.
I also used a Moog Little Phatty which I fed through an old Korg pedal board with the delay and choruses on it. I don’t like all my effects being done from the front-of-house desk, I like to feel an element of control. I had a Roland XP-30 which I also knew really well, I could hit C3 and there was my strings sample ready to go if I needed it. My backup was a Korg Triton which was always ready on stage in a flight case to come into service if anything else failed.
The problem with using multiples of anything live on stage is the higher potential for things to go wrong, but I still prefer a setup with individual keyboards for specific functions. I don’t really want to spend my time in pre-production programming loads of samples and sounds into computers, I want to be able to set up on stage and play.
Speaking of the spectacle that Yes fans looked forward to, do you think that is important for keyboard players, given that they can’t roam around and jump about like guitar players can?
I do think that keyboard players are a little jealous of guitarists. Guitars look beautiful, even the most horrible sounding guitar will still look beautiful. Keyboards can’t really hope to compete on an aesthetic level.
I have a Korg Kronos Special Edition in red with brushed red metal and that looks nice. I have a Dexibell H7 which I am very fond of, I use that a lot for recording and it’s my main practice instrument at home. I think keyboardists have to just accept that they may be a vital part of the band sound, but not necessarily the visual glamour that goes with it.
Is your musical antenna up when you listen to music? Do you hear a specific sound and make a note to track down how it was made, so you can maybe use it yourself?
I think I listen out more for the phrasing, and how the music is made to sound, rather than the specific sounds making it. Maybe I hear additional octaves and think how that enhances something, than the effect being used, which to me matters less in terms of the appeal of the piece. I have always loved the Moog sound, I love my Moog Little Phatty because I can tinker with the sound while I am playing it.
When you compose and record something, do you have your mind om playing it live, or is that something you will leave to figure out in rehearsals?
I always think about playing material live, I will never record anything I can’t play through in a live setting. I may have to have a few goes at it, but I will be sure I can play it properly.
There’s a piece I wrote called November Wedding which is quite fast and quite complex to play, and I worked at it for a long time, not because it was hard to play particularly, but to make sure I had the stamina and the concentration to play it through properly.
I never record quickly. I do use Pro-Tools to sketch out ideas, but I like to play something over and over and get the nuances in it
To me, the craft of writing music is like a woodworker carving an owl – you can write something and a computer will make it sound polished, a computer will do that with any music, good or bad, but the craft is in making sure that the listener is going to stay focused and engaged enough to hear it through, and then want to hear it again.
I play my wife pieces I’m writing, and she will say, that’s fine that will do. But that’s never enough for me, I want to leave something that is going to last, and that has to be something that has been crafted properly, with the best work I can do to make it right.
What advice would you give to keyboard players who are looking to expand their set-up and buy something new to add in?
I think you have to think about, and understand what sort of keyboardist you want to be. If you are going to be a piano player, you need a keyboard with weighted keys so you can learn the nuances within it as you play, and the stamina you will need for long and complex pieces. If you are going to work in soundscapes and effects, then that doesn’t matter so much, and you can look towards instruments that will suit that direction.
My keyboard tech will play a piano to test the sound at soundcheck, and it will sound really heavy, but give him a synthesiser and he will sound wonderful – it does depend on what and how you are going to play that is going go guide you in your choice of keyboards.
The piano is definitely my go-to instrument, it’s my home, it’s where I feel most comfortable. If you are going to choose a piano, get one with a nice action that feels right for you, and forget about any additional sounds, you can get other keyboards to do those for you. That makes me sound like I learned a lot – I never realised!
