This interview appeared on THE RIGHT STUFF originally.
Taken from IM&RW magazine
Steve Coy is the man behind the music for DOA. Originally starting out as the band's drummer, Steve is now the band's keyboard player, drum machine programmer, and co-producer. More interestingly, he acts as a kind of receiver/transmitter for the self-confessed 'musical cripple' Pete Burns.
"The role I see myself in is to just get what he wants, his ideas down...
"Pete is one of the easiest lead singers to work with. He writes the song in his head and when I say the whole song, I mean the whole song. So we go into the studio, put down a click track with some drums and he sings the basic song to the drums. Then, I ask him what sort of stlye he wants the song to be in and then we go up and down in the tempo to decide what the right tempo is...."
Once they have put down this basic song format, Steve sets to work on crafting the music to suit the idea of the songs. Like Burns, he thinks up many a tune in his head.
"I play every instrument in my head, although manually I can't play everything. I get people in, say a keyboard programmer, and tell them what I want.
"I start off with the rhythmn track, I'm kind of a portable DAT person. I bought a professional DAT machine about five years ago. The drums are built up from a selection of samples that I've acquired over the years. I'll ask Pete if he wants a particular bass drum sound and basically I'll take whatever is in his head and try to put it down. If he says it's a pile of shit then I'll re-do it. I very rarely use live drums 'cos they are not as tight as they should be so I tend to sequence all the pads, which are the Simmons ones.
"Then I start on the music. We've got a sponsorship deal from Casio so I use a lot of their stuff, especially the SS10M rack mount unit as well as the DX7 and the Roland Juno II.
"I've got different names for different sounds and I've got a number of favorite sounds like 'Dun-Dun' which is basically a very sharp pad going "Dun-Dun". Another one is a fat brass sound called a Je-um (pronounced as if you were French) and Bells. They are a big favorite with us. It's something to add a bit of sparkle here and there. Basically something that tracks the vocal line. Either that, or a nice light pad playing a counter rhythmn.
"Once that's done, I use what I call the Battlefield sounds, which are big reversals like hand claps....I just mess around with these basic ingredients until I find something I want. Once I've got the whole track down, I decide whether I like it or not and if I think it needs more. Then I go back to the Battlefield and find any wild sounds that I can....
"Pete will not sing in vocal booths- he hates wearing cans, and cannot get a good performance, so he sings in the control room. Because we make Dance records, the music has to be very loud to make it a performance. Problem is, you get into the idea of spillage. I have to get a microphone with a really small directional field and put him in front of it about an inch away and tell him not to move- we often use an SM57. Finally, I record another track with the microphone in exactly the same position and put it slightly out of phase to it cancels out a lot of the spillage.
"He blows up microphones quite easily because his voice is so loud. So, you end up with these weird saxophone solos going on which is feedback from the microphones 'cos the ribbons are fucked."
STEVE COY INTERVIEW