What the hell was it for!? I've found no actual video of him using it in any of the Magic tour concert videos. His website does say it was hooked up to a sampler though. link
Right now my main suspect are the little sound effects just before A Kind of Magic, but I'm not sure. Any ideas?
I actually don't think that's it. If you're referring to the start when he uses his left stick to reach over I'm pretty sure he's just hitting the top of the ride symbol. He does the same with the other symbols after that. It also doesn't line up with like the cowbell sound or anything, so I'm pretty sure that's just being triggered by Spike. Unless that's not what you meant?
Actually maybe you are right? At 10 seconds in he does seem to something the the right of the ride symbol, so maybe he does hit it to trigger a sample of the claps and cowbell? But he definitely doesn't hit it before the other times those noises are heard (two other times in the song, middle and end) so if that's true the sample would have to cover the whole song.
Thank you for making me realize this. I'm still a little skeptical though, would Rog really take the octopad and sampler along on tour for a song length sample that could probably just be done by Spike? Unless I'm like overestimating the ability of keyboards at the time and they couldn't do clap and cowbell noises at the time lol
Philip was probably busy playing the synth part. Also, they were loaded, so taking an octapad and sampler for just one song wouldn't have been too far-fetched. For all we know, maybe Roland gave it to him as a free sample in exchange for publicly featuring them and giving them advertising in return!