![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/mellotroninterior_sm.jpg?ssl=1\" "\\"Interior")
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[A view of the interior of the Mellotron M400. To learn more about how the Mellotron works, see the <\/em><\/em>Out of Phase: Magic Machines Resources<\/a> “information about Mellotron, Fairlight and other vintage keyboards” site.]<\/em><\/p>\n A dim little back corner of the cabinet which houses musical-instrument history is occupied by an odd device called the Mellotron. It was an early “synthesizer,” sort of. But it didn’t create the sounds of other instruments artificially, by generating electronic pulses and sending them directly to amplifiers and sound boards. The Mellotron played strips of audiotape<\/em>, several seconds in length, on which had been recorded a host of musical instruments: at its simplest, one note per instrument per strip of tape. Choose your instrument and press a key on the keyboard; the corresponding tape strip moves over a playback head; and out comes the sound of that instrument playing that note. When you release the key, the tape is repositioned so the playback head returns to the beginning of the strip.<\/p>\n (It puts one in mind of that Samuel Johnson wisecrack: “It’s like a dog dancing on its hind legs. The wonder is not that it does it well, but that it can do it at all.”)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Among proponents of the Mellotron in the 1960s and ’70s — its first heyday — were the Beatles (who used it in “Strawberry Fields Forever” and other songs), Yes, King Crimson, and various other progressive-rock performers. Peter Sellers (!) and L. Ron Hubbard (!!) each owned one. More recently, says Wikipedia<\/a>, the thing has been making a comeback, put to work in various projects by The Strokes, Rush, Arcade Fire… It’s an exhausting list.<\/p>\n Maybe the Mellotron’s biggest fans were (well, technically still are<\/em>) The Moody Blues<\/a>. One of their members, Mike Pinder<\/a>, had worked at the company which manufactured the Mellotron. He brought that knowledge with him, using it to create all sorts of odd effects which no one had ever coaxed from a real-world instrument. (Pinder allegedly introduced the Beatles to the Mellotron, too.)<\/p>\n One result: you immediately knew a Moody Blues song, even before you heard the vocals.<\/p>\n (A good thing, too. While I’ve always liked their music, their lyrics almost never bear close-up examination: a blend of hippy dreaminess, socio-political commentary, love songs which aren’t quite<\/em> love songs… The ideal way to listen to them is to sort of let your mind go out of focus, so it doesn’t snag on a given incongruity.)<\/p>\n Here’s a good example, “How Is It (We Are Here),” from their 1970 album A Question of Balance<\/em>. Listen for that between-the-lines eeee-e-e-eeee<\/em> effects, the woooooo-ooo<\/em>s in the background: those aren’t strings and woodwinds, they’re a bunch of audiotape loops sliding back and forth over their playback heads.<\/p>\n