He’s a supreme chameleon. A man of many hats, many talents, many gigs, and many synths. Roger Manning, Jr., does it all — from pop songs and film scores to commercial TV spots and world tours. He’s a top-call keyboardist, songwriter, and remixer with a mile-long string of credentials, and [drum roll] he’s also a long-time user and enthusiast of Roland gear.

• • • • •

Synth Addict

Manning’s love for keyboards and synths began at an early age. He explains, “In the ’70s there were all these guys running round with long hair and capes, and they were just as cool as all the guitar players. You were highly respected as a keyboard player in the ’70s rock world, and synthesizers were just getting off the ground. Everyone from Moog to Roland was launching all this cool gear and, as a kid, I was freaking out. The synthesizer was so alluring. In my opinion it was way sexier and more futuristic and sci-fi than the guitar, so I stuck with keyboards, hoping someday I’d get to play a real synthesizer, and eventually I did.

“In early ’80s, if you had synths or drum machines you had to learn how to program all this stuff,” he continues. “You had to become a tech, which I really wasn’t happy about, but it was a necessary evil, and I just got into it. I figured if I want to be good at this, I’ve got to open up the owner’s manual and start learning all this terminology.” So Manning dove into the world of synths, computers, and drum-machines fearlessly.

“I didn’t want to spend the time programming synths and drum machines, but when I did and figured out all kinds extreme, involved scenarios, I felt empowered. It meant nobody was going to be in charge of my system but me, which was very cool, and it meant I was doing sound design.”

As inspiring as technology was to Manning back then, it had its downside. “I had been doing stuff with computers and MIDI all through the ’80s,” he explains, “and I realized it was taking too long and it was too hard to deal with. I became very disillusioned with technology. I found it cumbersome, and it dragged down the record-making and songwriting process.”

Inspired by the music he grew up listening to in the ’70s, Manning plotted a return to more traditional ways of recording songs. “I wanted real players and a real band playing on real, old, organic gear.” The change took effect when he and songwriter Andy Sturmer formed Jellyfish in the early ’90s. They followed a more organic style of recording, shunning computers, MIDI, and sequencers.

Jellyfish did well with their flashback look and sound, but Manning’s paradigm shifted again in 1996, when he heard Beck’s release Odelay. This recording gave him audible proof that technology had evolved to the point where it was no longer hindering the music-making process. The bug had bitten Manning once again. Soon he acquired the biggest, fastest computer he could find, and jumped right back into the pool. “Fortunately, all the stuff I had taught myself in the late ’80s and early ’90s helped, but there was a whole new world to learn. I just locked myself in my room with my computer and started learning all this stuff all over again. And it’s been that way, ever since.”

Today, Manning’s work covers all extremes. “My whole music-making process has run the gamut completely. I do some sessions where there’s not a computer, MIDI sequencer, or a sampler to be found in the room. It’s just me and the piano. The next day I’ll do a session where it’s all electronics, computers, and the latest and greatest gear.”

Roger’s Room

Manning’s studio — located in the basement of his house — shows how comfortable he is with both vintage gear and new techno-geeky stuff. “I’ve been able to put my gigantic vintage keyboard collection all around the room, and integrate it with all my modern stuff: the computer, samplers, and my modern synths. I love my old Roland keyboard collection. It’s very much a part of the music-making process in this room. I have, starting with the grand daddy, a Jupiter-8, Jupiter-6, Jupiter-4, JX-3P, a JX-8P, the list goes on.”

Manning recently added a Roland V-Synth to inject some color into his collection. “I initially fired up the V-Synth at a music store and ran through the piano banks and strings. I didn’t realize what the machine was capable of. Then friend at the store said ‘You haven’t even cracked the surface.’ What he told me was that Roland has taken their VariPhrase technology and put it in the V-Synth, and made it much more user-friendly, much faster. You get that combined with their whole synthesizer and COSM filtering, and that’s where I got really turned on. There’s nothing on the market or in my current studio that can merge all these capabilities.

“I’ve used the V-Synth on several projects floating around out in the public. You wouldn’t know it’s me, because it’s on some Comedy Central promos and a Sprite commercial. Like many DJs and producers and remixers, I’m a huge vinyl collector. I have thousands of records, and I love taking bits from those albums and importing them and chopping them all to hell. I’m always looking for new ways to manipulate my sample library — to warp samples to one extreme and back. By virtue of doing this, I can make something very new from something that’s old and possibly very tired.

“I love having the vibe from of whatever that sample is,” he continues, “be it something I’ve gotten from classical music, a ’60s rock song, or a ’70s funk song, and through various means disguising them and making them into something very different, but still retaining the vibe from the original sample. The V-Synth offers me a whole new way of warping samples, along with some of the traditional ways I have been used to working. Without having to take a college course, you can pretty much get to work on it right away.”

Style Council

As far as musical styles go, Manning shows no favorites. His musical credits offer proof of his ability to slip seamlessly from one genre to another (see discography above). When asked about personal favorites, Manning says his ongoing collaborations with Beck represent some of his favorite work. On the Beck sessions he has done, he’s had to stretch to extremes. “Within the course of the day, I might be asked to play very intricate kind of jazzy chords in a retro-funk thing, then the next minute asked to do some crazy electronic Kraftwerk-inspired thing. He really pulled out a side of me as a collaborator, as a performer, and arranger that I hadn’t seen before.”

Manning can go from pop and country to hard-core and hip-hop at moment’s notice.

“I played on Blink 182’s record [Enema Of The State] and the lead singer Tom Delong called me up saying he was playing with this hip-hop guy Talib Kwleli. He asked me to come down and play some keyboards on it. I’m like, ‘Okay, great.’ I had never heard of Talib, and I was completely blown away. It introduced to a whole other genre in the hip-hop community that I wasn’t familiar with — and to come from Tom Delong of Blink 128 of all places! That was a great eye-opening experience.”

Recent Projects

What’s on Manning’s plate these days? He recently spent a week in the studio with Morrissey of The Smiths fame. He also remixed the Doobie Brothers’ hit “Listen To The Music.” He also played on a Johnny Cash release, and he remixed the original Henry Mancini “Pink Panther” theme for the remake of The Pink Panther movie (with Steve Martin and Beyonce). With a date-book stuffed with future session work, scoring, commercials, and other projects, Roger will be giving us much to listen to and talk about in the years to come.