Richard uses a Korg Electribe ER-1 during You Haven't Told Me Anything - it continues to play its rhythm during the main body of the song while he's drumming, but he uses the Electribe's built-in effects controls and pads to create the weird sounds during the intro and outro of the song. Note that it's the original Mk. I version, not the Electribe ER-1 Mk. II.

Well, on the live front, Tom has been favouring the wireless Sennheiser SKM 935 series for a number of years now, though I think they also used it wired cousin, the Sennheiser E 935 in the past. Tom has also spoken about how he also likes to use the 935 in the studio, often preferring it to much more expensive mics that are available. Having said that, they have made use of other mics while recording - their web updates during the recording of Perfect Symmetry showed a Neumann U47, for example. But generally, the Sennheiser is the preferred option!

In terms of the studio recording of Hamburg Song, I'm pretty certain that the organ sound is not from a synth but in fact from a real harmonium. They've certainly used a harmonium in the past (e.g. in the solo of Fly To Me) and there is a clip of Tim playing one in Helioscentric Studios (if memory serves, it was for part of Atlantic) on the Under The Iron Sea bonus DVD. To confuse things a little, the same DVD did also show some footage from Magic Shop studios in New York, where Tom was playing what looked like a Hammond B3 organ on the song, while Tim played a grand piano - however, I'm hedging my bets on the final studio cut using a harmonium.

I'm not entirely sure what sound they were using for it live - it may have been a harmonium sample or possibly just a Hammond organ sample. The voice options on your PSR-E403 are a bit limited, but I suspect the built-in organ voice will let you get away with something passable.

As far as I'm aware, Keane have continued their long-time support of Sennheiser by using the ew 500 wireless instrument system for both guitar and bass. The band also make extensive use of Sennheiser gear for vocals and drum mics, as well as using ew300 in-ear monitors.

There's an article on the Sennheiser site which gives some detailed information on the band's gear usage during their 2009 touring, with information courtesy of Matt Kettle and Jon Ormesher (their front-of-house and monitor engineers respectively).

There's a lot of gear that goes into making the Keane piano sound, but if you're just after a straightforward, punchy piano sound, things should be a bit straightforward.

For Keane, the CP-70's controls have typically been set-up as follows:

• Nothing connected to PATCH IN or OUT
• VOLUME set to approximately 7
• BASS set to between 3 and 4
• MIDDLE AND TREBLE set to 5
• TREMOLO switched off, SPEED AND DEPTH set to zero

In terms of effects, there's probably not very much you need. In the days of Hopes And Fears touring, one of the channel outputs from the piano went straight to the sound desk, just like microphones do (i.e. direct inject, or DI'ing) and I believe they still do this - another channel was run through a Line 6 Pod XT (which was later replaced by an XT Pro rackmounted effects unit) for its amp simulation. This would give a little bit more drive and "grunt" to the sound, with the output of the Pod then being mixed with the clean sound at the desk. As far as I'm aware, there were no other effects of any note used at that time - as a personal preference, I'd shy away from putting chorus on the CP-70 sound!

Hope that is of some use to you - note that I haven't actually tried any of it myself though, having only ever played my CP-70 in the comfort of my own home!

The distorted piano solo sound is played by Tim on the CP70 - he switches effects using the FBV Shortboard on the floor at the left-side of the piano. Tom plays the chords of the song on the other piano will Tim does the solo parts.

I asked Scott (Richard's drum tech) about this at the turn of the year - he said that Richard had been using a lot of Zildjian cymbals in the studio during the recording of the album and they liked them a lot, so it was just a natural progression to using them on the live kit in place of the Sabian HHX's he previously used.

According to the Zildjian website, Richard now uses the following Zildjian gear:

• A CUSTOM PROJECTION CRASH
• A CUSTOM PROJECTION HIHATS
• K BRILLIANT CRASH RIDE
• K DARK CRASH THIN

Up until now (January 2009), Tom has been using 3 different Fender Telecasters:

• A Japanese 60's re-issue model in white, with a black pickguard and a rosewood neck. This was also used during the album recording, where it sported a small rose under the strings at the headstock. This guitar actually belongs to Jesse!
• A Custom Shop Closet Classic 60's model in red, with a white pickguard and rosewood neck.
• There is also a silver Telecaster with a white pickguard, rosewood neck and double bound body that he plays on a couple of songs - I'm not entirely sure of the model on this, but I'm guessing that it's '62 Custom re-issue.

When played live, the distortion effects are achieved by running the CP70 outputs through Line 6 Pod XT Pro multi-effects units - the Crystal Ball riff sound is particularly easy to achieve (just use one of the distortion pedal models with lots of drive and gain), and with a bit more tweaking you can get very passable versions of the Is It Any Wonder? sounds and A Bad Dream solo sounds. In the studio, I am aware that Tim has used a vintage Chandler Tube Driver rack effect on the CP70 - I suspect he's also used other distortions, but I'm currently not sure of what. I'll try to see if I can find out any more!

If you've got a Pod XT, Derek Jevens (who runs the Keaneshine fan-site) has also made up some patches to give pretty convincing approximations of the piano distortion sounds. You can download them from the Line 6 Custom Tone web-site - do a search for "Keane" under the POD XT patches.

The primary use of the laptop was the same as it had always been - it provided tempo for Tim and Richard via a click-track, as well as playback of extra parts such as the bass-line, synth parts, strings and so on. During the gigs for Under The Iron Sea, there was initially only a single PowerBook G4 laptop sitting on top of the effects rack (to Tim's right when he was sitting at the piano) - this was pretty much the way things had been even back in 2003. However, in those days, Tim would manually control the loading of songs in Logic by using a mouse in the normal manner. As the band became bigger, they gave Tim a bit more freedom by not making him be solely reliant on operating the laptop, and instead allowing him to concentrate on playing - this was achieved by having the laptop be wirelessly controlled from off-stage by his keyboard tech. He would then be responsible for loading the songs onto the laptop, triggering them playing and so on. In addition, they also then employed a second "mirror" laptop off-stage that ran independently of the one on-stage, but perfectly in-sync - this meant that if there was a technical glitch with the one on-stage (say it crashed), it wouldn't need to derail the whole performance, as they could switch to the mirror one.

After October 2006, they used another laptop on-stage as well (to the right of the original one). This second on-stage laptop was used to run a sampled Rhodes piano sound and a sampled CP70 piano sound and was used whenever Tim played on either the main-stage Yamaha S90 or the b-stage Yamaha S90. The CP70 sampled sound was mainly for Hamburg Song from the b-stage, but could also be used if there was ever a problem with the actual CP70.

One other aspect that the laptop became responsible for was to switch the patches on the effects units for certain songs - this is still used for some in the Perfect Symmetry tours, as Tim simply wouldn't have enough limbs to keep playing and do all the necessary changes. However, there's now very little in the way of playback.

Controversial! Well, the basic answer to this is that with a couple of very minor exceptions (e.g. the percussion intro to Spiralling, the synth noises and filter sweeps in Everybody's Changing), they are actually playing it all live. In the case of Spiralling, the bass that you're hearing is actually synth bass rather than bass guitar - Tim is playing it with his left hand on the Korg Triton Extreme (the larger synth on the bottom of the stand facing the audience) while playing the piano parts on the Nord Lead 3 with his right hand. Jesse is playing other synth parts (such as the pad sounds and VCS3-style noises) on the Minimoog Voyager. Their synths can be set up to have a split point on some songs, meaning that different keys can be producing entirely different instrument sounds - this is notable on the chorus of Bedshaped - Jesse plays the synth bass with his left hand on the lower keys of the Minimoog, while playing the overdriven pad sounds with his right hand on the upper keys.

They aren't entirely away from the technology though, as it does still provide a click track for a number of the songs, as well as triggering the effects changes for Tom's guitar and changing patches for Tim's and Jesse's synths at the appropriate points in certain songs. This is presumably to allow Tom more freedom to move around with the guitar rather than having to worry about pressing pedals at the right points, and simply because it would be extemely difficult for Tim and Jesse to cope with changing patches for their synths at the same time as playing parts with both hands!

But, in answer to the original question, yes - to all intents and purposes, pretty much everything is being played live.

Good question! Firstly, the unique sound of the Yamaha CP70 comes from its design, rather than the controls on the front (they only provide volume, EQ, tremolo and effects send/return). The two main factors that give the distinctive sound are that the bass strings in the piano are on a far shorter scale than they are on an acoustic grand piano, plus the fact that it has fewer strings per note compared to a standard piano (1 on the lower bass octave, 2 on the rest). The other factor is the fact that each string has a piezo pickup that allows the sound to be amplified, sent through effects and so on. This is a similar system to what is used on electro-acoustic guitars, and it does produce a different sound to the normal "acoustic" sound from the strings. These factors all combine to give the CP70 (and its CP80 sibling) their distinctive, clunky, chiming sound.

Prior to having recently bought my own CP70, I had also been attempting to find a way of emulating the sound. I'm not overly familiar with the P85, but by the looks of things, it doesn't include a CP70-style voice (it only has two Electric Piano voices, which would typically mean Rhodes-style piano voices). Sadly, the only keyboards with a remotely convincing CP70 sound tend to be quite high-end and expensive - the voices (usually called something like Electric Grand) tend to sound like cheap, detuned pianos on the lower-end models. Yamaha's MOTIF XS range apparently have quite a convincing CP70 voice (here's someone doing some very accurate U2 songs with one), as do the Clavia Nord Stage and Electro models. However, getting them for just the CP70 sound would be mad, as they'll set you back between £900 and £2000 - and if you hang around, you can get a real CP70 for potentially less!

So, if you want to do it with a P85, you'll need to investigate some other options involving MIDI. Like most keyboards, you can connect the P85 to a computer (with an appropriate audio interface supporting MIDI) or a hardware sampler to trigger sounds using the keyboard. If you don't want to go the computer route, the best I can suggest to you is to try and get hold of an old E-MU Vintage Keys or Classic Keys rack module. Amongst various vintage electric pianos, organs and synths, these old modules include a CP70 sample that is convincing enough for the price - although they don't make these anymore, you should be able to pick one up on eBay (they come up quite frequently, usually selling for between £75 and £125). If you'd rather go the computer route and use some software samples, you've got a few options. Hollow Sun have the best known samples as part of their Nostalgia sample set, and this has been adapted by AraldFX for use with their Grand Electrix software instrument (you can use it with any software that supports VST instruments, such as Cubase). The most in-depth sample set is the Prominy PCP80 - it's based on the CP70's bigger brother (the CP80), but the sound is interchangeable. You probably won't find anything more convincing unless you buy the real thing, but its quite difficult to track down - I had to get one imported from the US. MOTU also introduced their Electric Keys sample set a couple of months ago, which includes a CP70/80 software instrument - not actually tried it myself, but the samples on the website do sound good (thanks to Sham for the info!).

I'd personally recommend you try the Vintage Keys rack unit route first and see how you get on - you'll also get the benefit of lots of cool synth voices too!