Synth Secrets Of The Human League

Korg shared this three-part video series, featuring Ian Burden, keyboardist and composer for the Human League.

Across the series of 3 videos, Burden talks about how powerful synthesizers were for ‘million rock stars’ in his early days, so Human League took a punk rock approach to synthesis. He explains some of the gear used to create the Human League sound and also discusses his more recent work.

6 thoughts on “Synth Secrets Of The Human League

  1. indeed that was interesting. I liked the part when he described how he had to play the bass triplets in ‘Circus Of Death’ manually and getting the cramps, while nobody seemed to notice the technical sync failure. Remembers me of old times (not as old as Ian Burden’s) when I played each track by hand on a simple monosynth, without any clock or metronome or sequencer.

    Actually, I still play repetitive parts by hand today. It makes electronic music somehow alive, human. Sequencers are for pussies (just joking of course).

    1. I thought maybe the triplet runs he was referring to may have been Empire State Human. The hand action he did was more in line with that progression, and it also has very fast keyboard actions.

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