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KeyboardMag.com >> This Month >> Roger Manning
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Roger ManningRoger Manning has always been a forward thinking kind of artist. He co-founded the quirky retro rock bands Jellyfish and Imperial Drag, as well as the electronica cover duo Moog Cookbook (they perform in space suits!). Soundtrack and session work also keeps him creatively busy; his film credits include Lost In Translation, Spiderman, and Dukes of Hazzard. But with the release of his first solo album, Solid State Warrior (Pony Canyon Records), Roger redirects his innovative playing and marketing ideas to work for his own greater good. Not only is the music inventive — alternative power pop with a twist of psychedelic flair — but the ways in which it was recorded, mixed, mastered and released push boundaries as well. The multi-instrumentalist played and tracked all of the instruments in his Los Angeles studio, Stu-Stu-Studio. The disc was later mixed and mastered remotely by John Paterno (Badly Drawn Boy, Robbie Williams). “Once I’m done recording,” Roger explains, “we take everything — all my scraps, bounces, mistakes, plug-in settings, etc. — and dump it into John’s hard drive. We literally mixed 90 percent of the record on servers via email [iDisk]. John would put up anywhere from ten to 30 different versions of a mix and I could pick the ones I liked. Once we had the final mixes, which took about three weeks total, we got together in his studio to go over everything with a fine-tooth comb.” Solid State Warrior is “old meets new” in every way. “All types of antique and modern gear were used in performing and capturing sounds for this record,” says Roger. “I used everything from vintage keyboards like the Hohner D6 Clavinet and Minimoog to the Roland Fantom-X8 and Native Instruments’ soft synths. I used outboard gear [ranging] from Trident, Quad 8, and API mixing consoles to software-based plug-ins by such companies as McDSP and Bomb Factory in conjunction with digital rack units by MoFX and Line 6.” Roger pre-launched Warrior on the progressive music distribution site www.weedshare.com to get a buzz going. He’s also producing a series of video podcasts shot around his studio, documenting the recording process. “Everybody from iTunes and CDBaby to my own personal website will feature the music,” says Roger of his shotgun alternative marketing approach. “The more companies that want to come to the party, so to speak, the better. Having been on a major label with Jellyfish, I will gladly be a guinea pig with my music to help launch a whole new musical paradigm.” |
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