Known by his musical alias JD73 (it’s short for Jazz Doctor 73), jazz/soul/funk auteur Dan Goldman lives and breathes. Boasting a resumé which includes tickling the ivories with Morcheeba, Leon Ware, TY, The Haggis Horns and members of Jamiroquai, Goldman has also remixed songs for Nightmares On Wax, Incognito, Richard Earnshaw, Cool Million and others.
This month Goldman releases Make Your Move, his follow-up to the last JD73 album, Pure Gold, and trust us when we say that it’s a feel-good funkfest of the highest order. We checked in with Goldman and asked him to talk about his favorite keyboards in his arsenal and the role they played on his new full-length.
JD73’s Make Your Move is out July 31, 2015 on Splash Music Productions.
Rhodes Mark 1 and Mark 7
Every track I write starts with one of my three Rhodes pianos. The Rhodes is the bed for pretty much every track I’ve written across my three albums — including my new album, Make Your Move. I have one piano from 1972, one from 1980 — my gigging piano — and one from 2010 with MIDI which I used on tracks including “Show Me” and “Marimba Dance” (also on the new album). The sound of a well-setup Rhodes always inspires me — just sit down, hit a chord, switch on the stereo-panning and bliss out!
Moog Voyager
My go-to studio bass machine which I’ve owned since 2004 (I use a Moog Mintaur as a more portable substitute for it on gigs). It gets used on pretty much every track I make. It’s rich, thick and organic with a stupid amount of low-end. Great for subs and more mid-rangey punchy bass too. Plus, it can really nail those classic Minimoog bass patches that I love and that are a big part of the JD73 sound — especially those killer bass sounds from Michael Jackson/Quincy Jones/Rod Temperton/Bruce Swedien Productions.
Moog MemoryMoog Plus
These are very hard to find now and fetching silly money secondhand, but I got lucky and bought mine for a steal about 10 years ago. It has a real earthy and organic quality to it with a huge sonic footprint that demands your attention! It also oozes classic ’80s string pads and synth brass but can sound wildly futuristic too. Nothing quite sounds like a Memorymoog, well, when it’s working that is — which most of the time it isn’t!
Nord Stage 2
Of all the newer ‘boards I own, my Stage 2 goes with me everywhere I gig and it gets a lot of studio/session use too. The acoustic pianos are the only sampled pianos that sit right with my music — the Bright Grand Piano features heavily on “Tripping Out” on the new album — and all the Nord piano samples sound extremely real, natural and soulful. I also love the Clavinet samples, which I often use to compliment or emulate rhythm guitars. The organs and synth/sample section are especially great for authentically dirty funk and for substituting the real instruments on gigs where it’s impractical to take my full rig.
Alesis Andromeda
This synth is a monster and a sonic chameleon! It can impersonate most of the classic analogue polysynths amazingly well — and monosynths too —but also has its own unique character. One of the most powerful yet underrated polysynths ever made, many people still don’t realise it’s a true 16-voice VCO synth powerhouse. It’s basically a self-contained modular analogue synth that can be internally re-wired and re-configured for just about any type of sound imaginable! Warm, metallic, raw, smooth and everything in between!
