As many are aware, Blur’s Damon Albarn moonlights for another band from time-to-time, and one that made him immensely popular way back when. The Blur frontman has revealed some news for true Gorillaz fans regarding the origins of one of their most popular tracks, Clint Eastwood. It might not just be the name of the track that isn’t the only unoriginal part of this smash hit.
As per Music Radar, sometimes, finding inspiration can be a hard-won battle. On other occasions, it’s right there waiting for you as soon as you turn on your synth. This is due to copyright law. Anyone is able to sample up to three beats from another already published work to create theirs.
Gorillaz’ Clint Eastwood. The familiar lolloping piano and drum beat from the band’s 2001 single wasn’t, it turns out, composed by Damon Albarn at all, but was simply a preset from the good old Suzuki Omnichord – the Rock 1 preset, to be precise.
Albarn made the revelation during an interview with Zane Lowe at the Blur frontman’s Studio 13 facility in London. There’s an impressive level of organization going on here: each synth has its own spot on a labelled shelf.
“It just came like that?” he asks. “That’s it. That’s the preset. It’s the Rock 1 preset,” says Albarn, before spicing it up with the Omnichord’s fill button.
Originally released in 1981, with the final model arriving in 1999, the Omnichord was a preset-filled groove machine that could play rhythms, chords and basslines, and had buttons that enabled you to switch between major, minor and 7th chords. The ‘Sonic Strings’, meanwhile, could be swiped to (sort of) replicate the sound of a stringed instrument.
