For the philosopher, see Paul Humphreys (philosopher)

Paul Humphreys (philosopher)

Paul Humphreys is a significant contributor to the philosophy of emergent properties, as well as other areas in the Philosophy of science and Philosophy of probability. He is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia, specialising in philosophy of science, metaphysics, and epistemology...

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Paul Humphreys (born Paul David Humphreys, 27 February 1960, in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

) is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 musician

Musician

A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

.

Life and career

He is best known as a member of synth pop group Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are a synthpop group whose founding members are originally from the Wirral Peninsula, England...

 (often abbreviated to OMD), which he founded with Andy McCluskey

Andy McCluskey

George Andrew "Andy" McCluskey is the lead singer, bass guitarist, and primary songwriter for the band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark ....

 in 1978.

He grew up on the Wirral Peninsula

Wirral Peninsula

Wirral or the Wirral is a peninsula in North West England. It is bounded by three bodies of water: to the west by the River Dee, forming a boundary with Wales, to the east by the River Mersey and to the north by the Irish Sea. Both terms "Wirral" and "the Wirral" are used locally , although the...

 in North West England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, during which time he developed his interest in German electronic music such as Kraftwerk, Neu!, Can and La Dusseldorf. He was also influenced by the work of Brian Eno and early ambient styles of music. Humphreys joined a variety of bands in the mid-1970s but this was mostly defined by progrock and it wasn't until he met Andy McCluskey that they began their own musical experiments which culminated in a one off gig as Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark at Eric's Club in Liverpool.

OMD became one of the leading bands in the synthpop movement, though they developed largely independently of other such as the Human League. OMD enjoyed considerable commercial success in Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

 and Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 during the 1980s.

He married Maureen in the early 1980s and they had a daughter named Madeline Humphreys who lives in America and is an aspiring actress. It is believed that the Humphreys divorced in the 1990s.

During his tenure in OMD, he was known for his skill at composing strong melodies, for instance in songs such as the UK hit single, "Souvenir

Souvenir (song)

"Souvenir" is a song written by Paul Humphreys and Martin Cooper of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and released as the first single from their 1981 album Architecture & Morality...

" and "Stanlow". Although McCluskey was the lead singer for OMD, Humphreys did sing on a few tracks, most notably on "Promise", "Souvenir", "Secret" and "(Forever) Live and Die", some of which became hit singles in the UK. Humphreys was not a strong singer however and it took some time for his voice to develop. Humphreys a quieter and more restrained individual than McCluskey and it was McCluskey who was the driving force in the band. The partnership worked effectively for some ten years. Humphreys once implied that they worked well together but that two Andys would kill each other and two Pauls wouldn't get much done.

In 1989, bored with the treadmill approach of trying to break America, and desiring to develop a more organic sound for OMD, Humphreys split from McCluskey along with fellow bandmembers Mal Holmes and Martin Cooper

Martin Cooper (artist)

Martin Cooper is a painter and a musician.-Musical career:From 1980 until 1989 Cooper was a member of the rock group Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Prior to joining OMD, Cooper played the saxophone at some of their concerts, or they used his pre-recorded work. He also played with Dalek I Love...

, to write and record under the name The Listening Pool

The Listening Pool

The Listening Pool was an English band, founded by three former members of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark , after the original-lineup split in 1989...

. However this project did not meet with any commercial success, though an album 'Still Life' was released. The sound was less directly electronic than even later OMD and is in marked contrast to the later sound of Onetwo and the reformed OMD.

In 1996 Humphreys began a songwriting collaboration with German musician Claudia Brücken

Claudia Brücken

Claudia Brücken is a German singer who fronted the synthpop groups Propaganda and Act. Since 1996 she has been working with OMD member Paul Humphreys, first without a name, since 2004 as Onetwo...

, who was formerly the singer in the moderately successful 1980s band Propaganda

Propaganda (band)

Propaganda is a German synthpop group, formed in 1982. They were one of the initial roster of acts signed to Trevor Horn's ZTT label, between 1984 and 1986, during which they released the critically acclaimed album A Secret Wish....

. The pair live together in London and have begun recording and performing live under the name Onetwo

Onetwo (band)

Onetwo is a synth pop group formed in 2000 by singer Claudia Brücken and keyboardist/singer Paul Humphreys . Their collaboration had no name until 2004....

.

In 2005 McCluskey and Humphreys reunited OMD for a gig on German TV. They decided to reform OMD which McCluskey had continued with from 1989 until winding up the band in 1996 disillusioned by the prevalence of Britpop. 2007 finally saw the return of OMD in their classic line-up on stage and they have toured extensively since having received an enthusiastic and warm welcome. 2010 saw the release of Humphreys' first album with OMD for 24 years, titled History of Modern

History of Modern

History of Modern is the eleventh studio album by British synthpop band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark . It is their first album since 1996, and the first album featuring the classic 4-piece line-up since 1986's The Pacific Age. The album was released in the UK on 20 September 2010, reaching to...

. Humphreys writes and records in London.

Humphreys' instruments

Humphreys' main instruments

Musical instrument

A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...

 are electronic keyboards

Keyboard instrument

A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...

. With OMD, he made use of a wide range of these including the Korg m500 Micro Preset monophonic analog synthesizer

Analog synthesizer

An analog or analogue synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses analog circuits and analog computer techniques to generate sound electronically. The earliest analog synthesizers in the 1920s and 1930s such as the Trautonium were built with a variety of vacuum-tube and electro-mechanical technologies...

, polyphonic

Polyphony

In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....

 analogue synthesizers such as the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 and the Korg Trident, the electromechanical tape-sampling instrument known as the mellotron

Mellotron

The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. It superseded the Chamberlin Music Master, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard intended for music...

, electronic organ

Electronic organ

An electronic organ is an electronic keyboard instrument which was derived from the harmonium, pipe organ and theatre organ. Originally, it was designed to imitate the sound of pipe organs, theatre organs, band sounds, or orchestral sounds....

s such as the Vox

Vox (musical equipment)

Vox is a musical equipment manufacturer which is most famous for making the Vox AC30 guitar amplifier, the Vox Continental electric organ, and a series of innovative but commercially unsuccessful electric guitars and bass guitars...

 Continental, and digital

Digital

A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...

 sampling

Sampling (music)

In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...

 keyboards such as the E-mu Emulator

E-mu Emulator

The Emulator is the name given to a series of disk-based digital sampling keyboards manufactured by E-mu Systems from 1982 until 1990. Though not the first commercial sampler, the Emulator was among the first to find wide use among ordinary musicians, due to its relatively low price and its size,...

 and Fairlight CMI

Fairlight CMI

The Fairlight CMI is a digital sampling synthesizer. It was designed in 1979 by the founders of Fairlight, Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie, and based on a dual-6800 microprocessor computer designed by Tony Furse in Sydney, Australia...

. Due to the restrictive nature of the equipment available to Humphreys and McCluskey they resorted to invention and innovation, which often defined their early sound. On the track 'Souvenir' (1981) Humphreys used recordings of a choir tuning up to create the ethereal and fluttery choral effects which gave the song its original sound

More recently he predominantly uses ProTools software and a series of soft-synths for recording and writing, and a Roland Fantom keyboard for live work, largely using it as a sampling keyboard to reproduce faithfully the original sounds. When recreating the original OMD sounds of the 1980s he had to resort to buying synthesisers off eBay.

Humphreys is a self-taught musician and in the first years of OMD he
built his own electronic sound making equipment. The group's first synthesiser, the Korg m500 Micro Preset was purchased through a catalogue belonging to Andy McCluskey's mother.