Jarvis Cocker shares why he uses a keyboard over a guitar when writing songs

Jarvis Cocker has confirmed the reason behind why he writes songs on a keyboard instead of a guitar.

Though the versatility of the guitar may prove popular with musicians, the Pulp frontman says he prefers writing material on a keyboard. Self-consciousness and problems over volume mean Cocker has opted for the electronic instrument over acoustic guitars in recent years. In an interview with The Art of Noise writer, Daniel Hannah, Cocker shared his thoughts on why he writes with a keyboard rather than the often opted-for guitar. Part of it is due to volume, but another aspect Cocker notes is how it informs the octave range of a song. He singled out This is Hardcore single, A Little Soul, as a song which sounded relatively flat at time of recording, and how a change in octave can solve the problem.

He said: “Volume makes a big difference. I tend to like to go places where you can shut the door and then you make as much noise as possible and nobody can hear you. If I think that people can overhear me, again it’s that self-conscious thing, I can’t do it. So I have to know it’s soundproofed. To sing convincingly I think you have to be singing towards the top of your range because then it’s got some kind of urgency to it.

“But to do that it’s obviously got to be loud ’cause if you’re just shouting over an acoustic guitar… so amplification does make a difference. That’s why I really started using Casio keyboards and things like that, because you can press a button and it’s got like drums and a bass line and some chords playing.”

Recording this way and choosing how to play the song live, particularly before it is recorded, has affected how Cocker changes his vocals. He said: “On stage you often find that a song doesn’t happen because… I found that with that song A Little Soul: that song was never played live before it was recorded.

“The recorded version is OK, but when we came to play it, when it came to the middle bit, it was just super flat. There was no dynamic to it. So when I sing it now I go up an octave for the bit in the middle and then it works. If we’d played that song live before we’d recorded it that would have become really apparent to me and obviously we would have recorded it that way.”

This is Hardcore would prove controversial on release, selling half of what the preceding album, Different Class, did. It also led to the departure of Russell Senior, the longstanding violinist and instrumentalist who had joined the band in 1983, and left in 1997.

The Pulp frontman has since said he and Senior have not spoken in a number of years, with the violinist appearing briefly in Pulp’s first reunion tour line-up back in 2011. He, along with Steve Mackey, were absent from the second reunion in 2023, which led to the announcement of new album, More.

Cocker, speaking to MOJO Magazine, said: “I’ve not spoken to Russell for a long time. Hopefully, the next time I go to Sheffield, I’ll try that.”