Keyboards

Bellamy & Pianos

The piano was the first instrument Bellamy really played; "I didn’t have any lessons, and though I tinkered with it since I was five, I didn’t really get interested until I was ten or 11. I used to work on my left hand to “What’d I Say” (Ray Charles) in sort of this boogie-woogie style. I spent ages working that out, practicing the left hand doing one thing and trying to do chords with the right hand."

Ever since the recording of Sunburn, the majority of Muse's songs have been drafted on piano by Bellamy: "I find it easy to find interesting chords on the piano. Especially because on a lot of stuff we do, the guitar and bass are harmonizing. Even a song like Stockholm Syndrome was written on piano."

Despite that, on an early TV performance of Sunburn, the band brought in someone else to play the piano part, while Bellamy played the guitar (although he later complained that the player was rubbish and got the notes wrong), as Bellamy didn't learn to sing whilst playing the keyboard until the end of the Showbiz era. This was also when the band began putting an emphasis on more complex, classically-influenced piano-based tracks such as Space Dementia, with Matt sporting a keyboard on-stage ever since around that time.

Bellamy's Live Keyboard Rig

Kawai MP9500

During the year 2000, Bellamy used a Roland Juno-60, Matt's first keyboard, for performances of the song Bliss, and a Wurlitzer 200A electric piano for New Born and Feeling Good. New Born was also played on the Juno on rare occasions.

During the Origin of Symmetry tour, he ditched the Wurlitzer, and updated to the Korg SG or Yamaha P80 stage pianos. The Juno-60 was also used. This allowed the acoustic piano sounds and electronic & synth sounds (e.g. arpeggios in Space Dementia's chorus) to be routed to their own individual amplifiers.

On the Absolution tour, he finally settled on the Kawai brand of digital stage pianos, starting out with a Kawai MP9500. It was mounted on a metal mesh podium nicknamed "The Dalek", which featured LED light bars with their own displays, with an ability to be synchronized to the stage's visuals, via the MIDI output from the keyboard, allowing the piano to output it's own lightshow; A system which was later used in the modified grand piano housing up until the Drones tour. For synth and electronic sounds, two Roland JP-8000 synthesizers were controlled using MIDI from the Kawai keyboard, each run through its own Fender Deville guitar amplifier to add color & dirt to the sound.

The release of Black Holes and Revelations, brought in the fourth member (which, at the time, was Morgan Nicholls, now succeeded by Dan Lancaster) as a staple fixture of live performances, with his own keyboard rig, used to replicate the synthesisers used on albums, without the need for excessive backing tracks (see below). In addition, Bellamy has updated his own live setup with a Kawai MP-8 digital stage piano. During the first part of the Black Holes and Revelations tour, the piano was mounted in a custom made upright piano shell, built by Vale Pianos. Bellamy played piano-based songs such as New Born (intro), Citizen Erased (coda), Butterflies & Hurricanes (solo), as well as Sunburn, Hoodoo, Soldier's Poem and Feeling Good on it. Since the gig at Rockhal, Luxembourg in 2007, the upright piano shell has been replaced with a black grand piano one, coupled with a transparent acrylic lid. As mentioned above, the shell had, in addition to the piano, MIDI-controlled light bars installed inside the section which would normally house the sound board. The light bars projected the light show on the acrylic lid, making the light squares from the LED bars look like holograms. It is important to note that this is not a real grand piano, but the same stage piano as used before, merely in a new case, thus having place in the shell for lights.

With the start of The Resistance Tour, Matt has used both the upright and grand pianos, while for the live performances of Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever), a Kawai ES-6 was used by Bellamy, mounted on an RC-controlled moving wireless keyboard stand, allowing him to play the piano, while standing infront of his main microphone with his guitar.

Used during The 2nd Law tour, and part of the Drones tour, both the black grand piano and the white upright shells were refinished to chrome, with the grand first being seen at the London Olympic Closing Ceremony, and the chrome upright seen on the Unsustainable stadium tour. The tours also saw Matt use the Kawai VPC1 for the first time, in the grand piano shell, while the Kawai MP-8 was put into the upright piano shell.

The Simulation Theory tour saw Bellamy upgrade the existing wooden shells to a newer, simpler custom shell. An all-black stand, it's fitted with colour-changing LED strip lighting, matching with the album's retrowave 80s theme. It was also likely around this time that Matt upgraded to a newer generation of the Kawai MP range, as the MP-8, previously mounted in the upright shell, was put on sale on Muse's Reverb page. The ssetup from the Simulation Theory tour was also used during the Will of the People tour.

Also during the Simulation Theory Tour, in 2018 and 2019, Bellamy added an Arturia MatrixBrute amalog synth to acompany his piano on-stage, using it to play the lead synth in Algorithm. The MatrixBrute was ditched from Matt's setup, following the end of the tour.

Synthesizers

Arturia MatrixBrute

In an interview with Keyboard Magazine. Bellamy said that he's always had a liking for arpeggios since his first keyboard (the Roland Juno-60), which had a built-in arpeggiator. Although Matt had the Juno-60 for a while, arpeggios didn't really feature in Muse's discography up until their second album, featured in songs like Bliss and Screenager. The band has always toyed around with using synth arpeggios in later songs, including those on Black Holes and Revelations, which was the first album to feature a Buchla 200e Series, a small modular synthesizer, which was purchased during the Miraval sessions in 2005, and has been prominently used for arpeggio parts on future albums. In an XFM Exposure Interview, it became clear that it is Howard who has spearheaded the increased use of modular synthesisers on Black Holes and Revelations - he liked the idea of recording a whole disc of synthesised music.

During live performances, arpeggios are played live using MIDI tracks ran through a synthesizer. Between 2006 and 2012, that synth was the Moog Minimoog Voyager RME, a rack-mountable version of the famous Minimoog Voyger analog synth unit. It is unknown which synthesizer was used for arpeggios during The 2nd Law tour. Since the Drones tour and up until his departure, Morgan used a Moog Subsequent 37 analog synth for arpeggios.

During the Black Holes & Reveleations tour specifically, some arpeggios were also played through the afforementioned Buchla 200e, which was operated by Dom Howard and used on Take a Bow, controlling the synth's filter control. The Buchla was also rotated with a MiniMoog Voyager and a bespoke modular sythesizer by Macbeth Studio Systems (e.g Reading Festival 2006); photographs can be seen on their web-site). Howard ditched the modular synths used live starting with The Resistance tour, leaving all synth parts to be played and ran through the fourth member's system.

Since The Resistance tour, Muse started throwing in more on-stage wireless MIDI controllers, controlling soft synths running on off-stage laptops. This includes Matt's Manson Keytar/Keytarcaster, used for Undisclosed Desires, Chris's Status Kitara Doubleneck Bass, and the Status Keyboard Bass. In an interview with Matt's guitar tech in 2019, it was revealed that for the Simulation Theory World Tour him, MIND Music Labs, Fishman, and Arturia, collaborated on a custom-made Arturia Prophet V Soft-Synth System, built into Bellamy's guitar. Bellamy has (so far) used the synth guitar during The Dark Side's solo, and once during Plug in Baby.

For the Will of the People 2022 Festivals Tour, Bellamy's Power Glove, which used to be a wardrobe prop for the Simulation Theory Tour, was modified to house a smartphone. The phone is used as a "synth", running a free-to-download app called "Noise". It is used on Behold, The Glove and Uprising.

Wolstenholme's keyboards

Roland JP8000

During the Absolution tour Chris occasionally used a Roland JP-8000 to play the intro to Time Is Running Out (early performances) and the string part of Blackout for which he also played Bellamy's Kawai.

Wolstenholme also played a foot-controlled synthesizer pedal in some songs, for example the pad sound in Sing for Absolution or the bass in Unintended, while playing acoustic guitar. The foot pedals he used were the Moog Taurus 1 (OoS tours) and the Roland PK-5 (Absolution tours). During the BH&R tour, Chris occassionally played the Kaoss pad noise on New Born, as seen on the H.A.A.R.P. DVD.

On The Resistance tour, Chris ditched playing any keyboards or synth almost completely, while for The 2nd Law tour, he, allthough not technically a keyboard, got himself a Status Kitara Doubleneck Bass, used for Madness, later replaced with a Status Kitara Doubleneck Bass Mk2, which was also used for Dig Down. For the Simulation Theory tour, Chris has got himself an custom Status Keyboard Bass, which includes, as the name implies, a keyboard built into the bass. For both the Kitara bass and the Keyboard bass, the keyboard part is connected via a wireless MIDI unit to an off-stage laptop, running the synth engine (in Chris' case, MainStage).

Nicholls' Gear

Moog Sub37

The range of synthesiser parts used in Absolution meant that during the tour in support of it, the band began to use backing tracks in order to perform the songs in their entire nature. However, in the time leading up to the release of Black Holes and Revelations, Bellamy discussed how they had, as a band, decided to use a fourth live member from now on, to reduce the need for such backing tracks. This man is Morgan Nicholls, famed multi-instrumentalist. As befits a man of his enigma, Nicholls's gear remains something of mystery to this day. His two keyboards during the BH&R era, when he started touring with Muse, could be identified as a Clavia Nord Modular G2 (responsible for the band's vocoder effects), and a Novation ReMOTE SL 61 MIDI controller. His rack contained a MiniMoog Voyager RME, an Electrix Filter Factory and an Electrix Mo-Fx MK2. He was also using a Damage Control TimeLine delay unit, and a Korg KP3 Kaoss Pad, which he is known for using to this day. Furthermore he was (and presumably still is) using Logic and software instruments running any backing tracks when he's playing live.

During The Resistance tour, and the early The 2nd Law tour, the two keyboard setup was ditched completely in favour of just one MIDI keyboard, the Kawai MP-6, with his racks placed on a custom keyboard mount infront of him, instead of being on a rack unit behind him. The KP3, aswell as most of the rack effects units were kept from the previous tours.

For The 2nd Law tour and the Drones tour, the on-stage computer was ditched from the stage itself, and Morgan instead opted for an iPad-based on-stage control system, using two iPads running Liine's Lemur software, which is controlling the MainStage software for keyboard sounds. The two-keyboard setup was back once again; Using the Doepfer D3M as his main keyboard in combination with the Novation Mininova for vocoder parts.

During the Drones tour, the Mininova was relpaced with a Moog Sub37, which appears to be used through MIDI for arpeggio parts, aswell as additional synth parts and some filtering. During the Simulation Theory tour, this setup has remained quite similar, with the iPad system ditched and his laptop back on the stage. Alike Matt and Chris, Morgan uses a Kemper Profiling Amplifier (white) for touring. It is placed in a rack, beside Chris' racks.

Lancaster' Gear

With Morgan Nicholls announcing his departure as a live member from the band in 2022, he was replaced with Dan Lancaster, who, like Morgan, is another well-known multi-instrumentalist and music producer. Lancaster's setup has similarities with Morgan's in that he combines a MIDI keyboard together with an analog synthesizer, however the Kaoss Pad, known to be used by Nicholls, is now gone.

Lancaster's current setup includes a Korg Minilogue XD, a polyphonic analog synthesizer, with his main MIDI keyboard being Native Instrument's Komplete Kontrol M88 keyboard. He also has an Akai sampler and two MIDI drum pads in his setup.

References

http://www.keyboardmag.com/story.asp?sectioncode=29&storycode=9057

http://www.novationmusic.com/artist_community/international/muse/

http://www.tonastodin.is/gr_myndir/piano/kawai/KawaiNews_0610.pdf