Synthesizer Artist Gets in Tune With Past : Pop music: Keyboardist Howard Jones, known for electronic gimmickry, switches to regular piano for San Diego show.

SAN DIEGO —  Midway through Howard Jones’ 1985, one-man-band show at SDSU’s Open Air Theatre, the British keyboardist did something sure to incur the wrath of any technophobes in the audience. Abandoning his colossal bank of synthesizers, Jones skipped back and forth across the lip of the stage, clapping his hands in Pied Piper fashion as thousands cheered and clapped along.

Nothing unusual there, except that the dense, electronic sounds emanating from the stage never missed a beat. In essence, while Jones played with the audience, his keyboards and drum machines played themselves, cued by a complicated system of digital sequencers and other gizmos he’d triggered before leaving his perch. This goofy tableau seemed the ultimate flowering of machine madness, and critics let Jones have it with both barrels for apparently dealing in “push-button music.”

Tonight, in radical contrast to that show, Jones, 37, will perform at Sound FX on nothing more exotic than an acoustic piano, accompanied only by percussionist Carole Steele. Though he remains defensive about the issue of machine-made music, the hit-maker claims that his current, low-tech show is not a reaction to past criticism but an honest effort to reduce his music to its basics.

“The thing that I still resent is that some people didn’t think I was playing live music on that tour, because I was,” Jones said by phone from his Chicago hotel room earlier this week. “They’d say, ‘Oh, does he even have to turn up for the show?’ and that was incredibly unfair.

“Actually, I was programming synthesizer sequences as I played , so that when I left the keyboard setup, the only things running were the arpeggiating patterns on one keyboard, and a five- or six-note sequenced loop. I was generating the music at that moment, and it was right on the edge. But no one had done that one-man kind of show before, so how could people know what I was doing?”

Those attending tonight’s concert won’t face such a predicament. Jones’ current album, “In the Running,” might be rich with the sort of layered production textures that characterized his previous work, but his touring show is a study in understatement.

“In my opinion, the instrumentation doesn’t really matter, because most people who go to a concert are interested in the emotional impact of the music and not in how the lighting works or how the keyboards work or whatever,” he continued. “But inasmuch as this (piano and percussion) approach represents something of a risk, I’m finding it a very fascinating and satisfying experiment. For one thing, the format allows me to be more spontaneous on the piano. We improvise more than I was accustomed to, and that makes every night different.”

In a sense, Jones’ spartan program is the latest phase of a reductive process that dates to his earliest days as a professional musician. Although he was born in Southampton, Jones’ family emigrated to Canada in the late ‘60s. There, in 1970, he formed Warrior, a trio that emulated such British progressive-rock bands as Yes, and, especially, keyboardist Keith Emerson’s pre-ELP band, the Nice.

“I was only 15, and it was my first band,” Jones recalled with a laugh. “We had bass, drums, and me playing an organ we borrowed from a friend’s dad. For a long while, we played only instrumental music. I’d take bits of Bach and fit them to rock ‘n’ roll rhythms. It was incredibly complicated and incredibly pompous.”

Warrior came close to signing a record deal, which, in retrospect, Jones thinks could have been a bad thing for such a young musician. Instead, Jones eventually moved back to England to study at Manchester University, where he bought his first synthesizer. For a while, he performed in clubs with a mime, then embarked on the one-man-band project that would win him a record deal and subsequent fame and success.

The 1984 techno-pop opus, “Human Lib,” which included the hits “What Is Love?” and “New Song,” established Jones as a chartable force whose musical ideas ran to melodic, frequently danceable pop and whose lyrics painted him as a sincere, if mild-mannered, humanist. The slightly funkier “Dream Into Action” (1985) built on its predecessor’s successful formula with the hits “Things Can Only Get Better” and “No One is to Blame,” and Jones’ British popularity crossed the Atlantic to the States.

After a period of relative musical inactivity that began in the late ‘80s--during which he devoted much time to various social causes--Jones is finding that the acoustic approach affords him a fresh perspective on both his old and new music.

“It’s been very interesting for me to do simpler versions of my older hits,” he said, “because when you strip away the production and sound of that era, if there’s a good song underneath there, then it will translate as such. In my opinion, songs like ‘What is Love,’ ‘Pearl in the Shell,’ and ‘Like to Get to Know You Well’ work very well on just piano.”

Jones admitted that his music is undergoing some alterations as a result of his working with percussionist Steele--best-known for her recent work with Steve Winwood. The odd piano-and-percussion interplay has encouraged different treatments of music that Jones formerly heard only one way.

“We set out to avoid having Carole sound like a drum kit,” he explained. “She’s not laying down typical bass (drum) and snare patterns. Instead, we’ve created other rhythms that work. The results are frequently unusual. On one song, she uses a rhythm called guanguanco (pronounced wah-won-CO), which I never would have dreamt of using. And we gave ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ a sort of Latin rhythm, which has had a rather interesting effect.”

In many ways, Jones’ new album reflects a more mature take on the crafting of music and message. While “In the Running” features songs about environmental destruction (“Exodus”), blind hatred (“Gun Turned on the World”) and mental illness (“The Voices Are Back”), Jones has given both the words and the music room to breathe in a way that his more literal, more tightly structured past efforts couldn’t.

“I’ve always felt pop music was a great platform for discussing current issues, and I tried to do that even with my earliest work,” he said. “But as the years go by, I find myself getting more articulate as a lyricist. I’m using more impressionism and blurring the point more so that the listener can involve himself in the process.

“Musically, I’ve been trying to develop my writing to give songs these long, floating sections at the beginning and at the end. The idea is to sort of ease the listener into the mood, and then take them down gently from what they’ve just been through.

“I’ve also been exploring key (signature) relationships--how moving among different keys can have an emotional impact on a listener. I tried to think of this album as a whole, and not just as 10 tracks hitting you one after another with that ‘whirlwind’ effect. And I think the new live show reflects that more relaxed approach, as well. I’m enjoying the entire experience immensely.”