The Human League: Love Action synth

[Wicker Man]

Sorry to contradict anyone, I thought this topic had been debated over the years and the consensus was that guitar strumming was fed into the Roland System 700 synth, using the pitch/voltage converter and envelope shaper for output.

I've never heard of guitars being banned on Dare but can see that they don't really fit in with the sound that Rushent was achieving...the fact that we are still trying to unpick an electronic sound 40 years later is pretty cool. I would suggest that Callis or Burden strummed it and Rushent/Allen programmed the processing.

[mcbpete]

You can see the keyboard 'strumming' in [love] action at the start of this performance (with the other guy doing the filtering/ring-modding shenanigans on the Roland) :

[Wicker Man]

A TV performance isn't going to reveal all, particularly as they'll be miming.

I'll stick to my point about the guitar strum being programmed through the System 700...there is even a mention of it on wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Acti ... e_in_Love)

[noiseboyuk]

I'll need to check the podcasts to where either Jo Callis or Ian Burden mentioned this, but that guitar trigger was the 16th pattern in Don't You Want Me, and it was just a noisegate - that way Phil allowed it! Again, listen to the demo they did in Sheffield of Love Action in the OP - that has the same sound there, and the System 700 was Martin Rushent's at Genetic.

I'm pretty sure that in addition to the credited synths they used the System 100 though which they still had access to from before the split (one half used it by day, the other by night). So I guess the percussive and sample and hold parts of the sound could have come from that which seems more plausible than the Korg or Yamaha.

When I have more time than sense, I'll dig out the refs.

EDIT - oh there you go, Martyn Ware’s Electronically Yours podcast, episode 29 Jo Callis. The moment is at around 39.30, but the whole section on the creation of Don’t You Want Me is totally worth listening to, it’s hilarious (don’t listen with kids around). That starts at 34 mins,

[CHOOS]

I love the people in this forum.
It's amazing the level of inside knowledge some of you f**kers have

[noiseboyuk]

I love the people in this forum.
It's amazing the level of inside knowledge some of you f**kers have

I've been doing a ton of research on the Human League at the moment for... reasons. I definitely know waaay too much.

Ian Burden very briefly references our mystery sound on this podcast at 1hr 18m - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d ... 0436610557 , he just says he came up with the "choppy" sound. It was most significant to him as the first time he was allowed to play chords - he thought it was a rule that everything had to be mono lines (like the "no real instruments" rule). Turned out that wasn't the case.

So we know it was Ian Burden playing.... something... based on chords... in Sheffield. On the same tape as Hard Times on their 8 track recorder. Other than that...