Back in the ‘80s, Midge Ure was best known for having a lot of hit records (both as part of Ultravox and as a solo artist) and working with Bob Geldof to raise a massive amount of money for Ethiopian famine relief. However, history tells us that he also had an interesting sideline in explaining new music technology products to slightly bewildered TV presenters.
The BBC Archive has previously released 1984 footage of Ure extolling the benefits of the PPG Wave – one of the new breed of digital synths that he said would replace “very basic” instruments such as the Minimoog – and now it’s plucked more footage of him from the vaults.
This time, he’s discussing his new guitar synth – a Roland GR-700 – with music journalist and Whistle Test presenter David Hepworth, who begins by asking Ure how long he’s had it.
“Two days,” says Ure. “So you’ve barely got it out of the box,” points out Hepworth, perhaps making Ure feel even more nervous about demonstrating a piece of gear that he barely knows than he already is.
Ure soon makes it clear that he’s got this, though, explaining patiently to Hepworth that, although it looks like he’s holding a normal guitar, it’s actually been modified with an additional MIDI pickup that can trigger both the GR-700’s sounds and the ones on the Yamaha DX7, which is also sitting in shot.
Then we're ready for the demo; Ure begins by playing the guitar as normal, to illustrate that it can still sound like that, before breaking out the synth strings. He then demonstrates how he can play his guitar’s actual sound over the top of the synth-generated one.
“It has 64 memories on it so you can actually pre-program your own sounds – you don’t have to use the basic sounds that are in it,” Ure adds.
Next, it’s time for some patch layering, as Ure uses MIDI to play sounds from the DX7 and GR-700 simultaneously.
“What are you planning to actually use it for?”, asks Hepworth, possibly unimpressed by Ure’s whammy-bar-aided impression of a door bell.
“I think I’d have to spend many a long hour sitting in the studio working with the thing before I take it out on stage,” replies Ure. “There’s a lot it can do – there’s a few things it can’t do, and I wouldn’t like to go out there and [make] all the mistakes.”
“But meanwhile it’s a marvellous toy,” says Hepworth, though possibly not one that he would ever spend more time learning about.
To be fair, guitar synths have never become as ubiquitous as some thought they would, though the likes of Robert Fripp, Andy Summers and Jimmy Page all had dalliances with them in the mid-’80s.
What’s more, Roland’s GR range still exists, though it’s been 15 years since the release of the GR-55, which remains the flagship.
