"Electronic musical instrument An electronic musical instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound using electronic circuitry. Such an instrument sounds by outputting an electrical, electronic or digital audio signal that ultimately is plugged into a power amplifier which drives a loudspeaker, creating the sound heard by the performer and listener. An electronic instrument might include a user interface for controlling its sound, often by adjusting the pitch, frequency, or duration of each note. A common user interface is the musical keyboard, which functions similarly to the keyboard on an acoustic piano, except that with an electronic keyboard, the keyboard"
"time) of the Mellotron – an analogue electronic musical instrument that uses a bank of pre-recorded magnetic tape strips, each of which is activated by a separate key on its keyboard and lasts approximately 8 seconds. Wakeman featured playing this instrument, to varying degrees, on the David Bowie track ""Space Oddity"", the Yes albums ""Fragile"", ""Close to the Edge"" and ""Tales From Topographic Oceans"", as well as the solo albums ""The Six Wives of Henry VIII"" and ""White Rock"". An urban legend claims that Wakeman got so frustrated with one Mellotron that he poured petrol on it and set fire"
"The problem of audible loop thumps was addressed in another Mellotron related instrument called a Birotron. In the Orchestron, the most commonly used sounds were the ""violins"" and ""vocal choir"" sounds - the choir being taken from the Optigan's ""Vox Humana"" disk. An estimated 40 Orchestrons still exist today and replacement discs and new discs are being produced for the instrument. While not as popular or well known as the Mellotron, the Orchestron is still revered and sought after by musicians for the low fidelity and murky atmospheres it provides. Orchestron The Vako Orchestron is a keyboard instrument that produces"
"Semantron The semantron or semandron (), or semanterion (σημαντήριον), also called a xylon (ξύλον) (; Russian: било, ""bilo""; Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian: клепало, ""klepalo""; Arabic: ناقوس) is a percussion instrument used in monasteries to summon the monastics to prayer or at the start of a procession. The instrument comes in three chief varieties: a long wooden plank held in the player's left hand and struck with a wooden mallet in the right; a larger, heavier, fixed timber block suspended by chains and struck by one or two mallets; and a fixed metal variety, often horseshoe-shaped and struck by a metal mallet."
"Mellophone The mellophone is a three-valved brass instrument pitched in the key of F or E. It has a conical bore, like that of the euphonium and flugelhorn. The mellophone is used as the middle-voiced brass instrument in marching bands and drum and bugle corps in place of French horns, and can also be used to play French horn parts in concert bands and orchestras. These instruments are used instead of French horns for marching because their bells face forward instead of to the back (or to the side), as dissipation of the sound becomes a concern in the open-air"
"with altogether, and traditional rhythm guitar is almost never used, as chordal backgrounds are typically played on a keyboard instrument such as the Hammond organ. In the 1960s, it was impractical to work together with an orchestra on a regular basis. As a substitute, the Mellotron is a keyboard instrument that contains tape-recordings of individual notes of various instruments and voices, and plays back their sounds as the keyboard is pressed. Its sounds included woodwinds, choirs, brass and, perhaps most famously, strings. The technology available meant that its sounds were not exact reproductions of the instruments, but instead had a"
"of the instrument. Kenton used a four-man mellophonium section September 1960 through November 1963 on 11 albums; two of those LPs received Grammy Awards (""Kenton's West Side Story"" and ""Adventures In Jazz""). The Vincent Bach Corporation also produced a mellophonium, with the shape of the tubing more reminiscent of the cornet. The F. E. Olds company manufactured mellophoniums with the same wrap as the Vincent Bach Corporation design. The Holton company manufactured mellophoniums with a trumpet like lead pipe and valve assembly with the rest being comparable to a mellophonium. Mellophone The mellophone is a three-valved brass instrument pitched in"
"members of The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. Despite this success, it is now generally considered the world's rarest keyboard instrument in the genres of pop/rock music. It also retains the highest selling price for any Mellotron related keyboard, and since its inception, has been one of the most difficult to find, seldom seen, and least recorded instruments in the entire world. The Birotron is a keyboard instrument that uses 8-track cartridge tapes to play sounds whenever a key is pressed on the keyboard. It is similar in concept to the Chamberlin and Mellotron, and was a forerunner of digital sampling."
"of tune. Two instruments are called a ""mellophone."" The first is an instrument shaped somewhat like a horn, in that it is formed in a circle. It has piston valves and is played with the right hand on the valves. Manufacturing of this instrument sharply decreased in the middle of the twentieth century, and this mellophone (or mellophonium) rarely appears today. The second instrument is used in modern brass bands and marching bands, and is more accurately called a ""marching mellophone"" or mellophone. A derivative of the F alto horn, it is keyed in F. It is shaped like a"
"instruments are called a ""mellophone"". The first is an instrument shaped somewhat like a horn, in that it is formed in a circle. It has piston valves and is played with the right hand on the valves. Manufacturing of this instrument sharply decreased in the middle of the 20th century, and this mellophone (or mellophonium) rarely appears today. The second instrument is used in modern brass bands and marching bands, and is more accurately called a ""marching mellophone"" or mellophone. A derivative of the F alto horn, it is keyed in F. It is shaped like a flugelhorn, with piston"
"his solo career. The instrument became increasingly popular among rock and pop bands during the psychedelic era, adding what author Thom Holmes terms ""an eerie, unearthly sound"" to their recordings. Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones played a Mellotron on several of his band's songs over 1967–68. These include ""We Love You"", where he used the instrument to create a Moroccan-sounding horn section, ""She's a Rainbow"", ""2000 Light Years from Home"" and ""Jigsaw Puzzle"". The Mellotron became a key instrument in progressive rock. King Crimson bought two Mellotrons when forming in 1969. They were aware of Pinder's contributions to the"
"Chamberlin The Chamberlin is an electro-mechanical keyboard instrument that was a precursor to the Mellotron. It was developed and patented by Wisconsin inventor Harry Chamberlin from 1949 to 1956, when the first model was introduced. Various models and versions of these Chamberlin music instruments exist. While most are keyboard-based instruments, there were also early drum machines produced and sold. Some of these drum patterns feature the work of Chamberlin's son Richard on them. Harry Chamberlin's idea for inventing the instrument came from his recording himself playing an organ. He formed the idea of playback music coming from an organ as"
"six lead stations, each containing three lead instruments which can be mixed. In the centre of the Mellotron, there is a tuning button that allows a variation in both pitch and tempo. Later models do not have the concept of stations and have a single knob to select a sound, along with the tuning control. However, the frame containing the tapes is designed to be removed, and replaced with one with different sounds. Although the Mellotron was designed to reproduce the sound of the original instrument, replaying a tape creates minor fluctuations in pitch (wow and flutter) and amplitude, so"
"Mellotron was not extensively used in the 1980s, a number of bands featured it as a prominent instrument. One of the few UK post-punk bands to do so was Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, who featured it heavily on their platinum-selling 1981 album ""Architecture & Morality"". Andy McCluskey has stated they used the Mellotron because they were starting to run into limitations of the cheap monophonic synthesizers they had used up to that point. He bought a second-hand M400 and was immediately impressed with the strings and choir sounds. XTC's Dave Gregory recalls seeing bands using Mellotrons when growing up"
"as a feature in major magazine and newspaper articles as well as a recent documentary on the Mellotron and Chamberlin. Birotron The Birotron (pronounced by-ro-tron) is a tape replay keyboard conceived by American musician and inventor Dave Biro of Yalesville, Connecticut, US, and funded by English keyboardist Rick Wakeman in the 1970s, and Rudkin-Wiley of Pepperidge Farm Foods (under Campbell's Soup company) and Air Shield in the early 1980s. A Mellotron-like instrument in the prototype stage and intended for mass production, it was featured on several albums and tours. It appeared in advertisements and received press in several newspapers as"
"The cittern or cithren (Fr. cistre, It. cetra, Ger. zitter, zither, Sp. cistro, cedra, cítola)[1] is a stringed instrument dating from the Renaissance. Modern scholars debate its exact history, but it is generally accepted that it is descended from the Medieval citole (or cytole). It looks much like the modern-day flat-back mandolin and the modern Irish bouzouki. Its flat-back design was simpler and cheaper to construct than the lute. It was also easier to play, smaller, less delicate and more portable. Played by all classes, the cittern was a premier instrument of casual music-making much as is the guitar today."
"a horn, in that it is formed in a circle. It has piston valves and is played with the right hand on the valves. Manufacturing of this instrument sharply decreased in the middle of the twentieth century, and this mellophone (or mellophonium) rarely appears today. The second instrument is used in modern brass bands and marching bands, and is more accurately called a ""marching mellophone"" or simply ""mellophone"". A derivative of the F alto horn, it is usually keyed in F, occasionally in G. It is shaped like a flugelhorn, with piston valves played with the right hand and a"
"professional broadcast quality. The Mellotron was eventually dropped in favour of electronic oscillators and synthesizers. British multi-instrumentalist Graham Bond is considered the first rock musician to record with a Mellotron, beginning in 1965. The first hit song to feature a Mellotron Mk II was ""Baby Can It Be True"", which Bond performed live with the machine in televised performances, using solenoids to trigger the tapes from his Hammond organ. This was followed by Manfred Mann, who used its reed sound on their late 1966 single ""Semi-Detached Suburban Mr James"". The band then included multiple Mellotron parts on their follow-up single,"
"Metallophone A metallophone is any musical instrument consisting of tuned metal bars which are struck to make sound, usually with a mallet. Metallophones have been used in music in Asia for thousands of years. There are several different types used in Balinese and Javanese gamelan ensembles, including the gendér, gangsa and saron. These instruments have a single row of bars, tuned to the distinctive pelog or slendro scales, or a subset of them. The Western glockenspiel and vibraphone are also metallophones: they have two rows of bars, in an imitation of the piano keyboard, and are tuned to the chromatic"
"to play the instrument live into the 2000s as part of a reformed band. Rick Wakeman played Mellotron on David Bowie's 1969 hit song ""Space Oddity"". Having previously found it difficult to keep in tune, Wakeman had discovered a way to do so using a special fingering technique. The Mellotron was used by German electronic band Tangerine Dream through the 1970s, on albums such as ""Atem"" (1973), ""Phaedra"" (1974), ""Rubycon"" (1975), ""Stratosfear"" (1976), and ""Encore"" (1977). In 1983, the band's Christopher Franke asked Mellotronics if they could produce a digital model, as the group migrated towards using samplers. Though the"
"Xylophone The xylophone (from the Greek words —""xylon"", ""wood"" + —""phōnē"", ""sound, voice"", meaning ""wooden sound"") is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African and Asian instruments, diatonic in many western children's instruments, or chromatic for orchestral use. The term ""xylophone"" may be used generally, to include all such instruments such as the marimba, balafon and even the semantron. However, in the orchestra, the term ""xylophone"" refers specifically to"
"electro-mechanical, polyphonic sample-playback keyboard, which used a bank of parallel linear magnetic audio tape strips to produce a variety of sounds enjoyed popularity from the mid-1960s. The initial popularity of the Mellotron would be overtaken by the Moog synthesizer, created by Robert Moog in 1964, which produced completely electronically generated sounds which could be manipulated by pitch and frequency, allowing the ""bending"" of notes and considerable variety and musical virtuosity to be expressed. The early commercial Moog synthesiser was large and difficult to manipulate, but in 1970 Moog responded to its use in rock and pop music by releasing the"
"of the instrument, see the much more detailed article for the Semantron. Simantra Simantra (or semantron or in Romanian Toacă) is an Eastern Orthodox percussion instrument used in liturgical service and is either a wooden or metal slab or bar that is mounted or suspended and struck with a mallet. The Simantra has been used by classical composers including Iannis Xenakis (""Persephassa"") and in Michael Gordon's ""Timber"" (2011). A Simantra is rich in overtones compared to the bars of percussion instruments such as a marimba or xylophone, where the fundamental is primary. The tone changes based on how near or"
"Swarmatron The Swarmatron is an analogue synthesizer or electronic musical instrument that uses a ribbon controller rather than a keyboard. It is noted for its use of multiple oscillators that are linked through a 'swarm' control, giving its distinctive sound and method of playing. The Swarmatron is a fingerboard synthesizer like the Trautonium or Tannerin. A finger is placed or slid from side to side along a ribbon controller, controlling the pitch. Glissandi are obviously easily achieved, or careful finger placement may be used to play discrete notes. The distinctive feature of the Swarmatron is its use of eight individual"
"contained a variety of sounds, including automatic accompaniments. Bandleader Eric Robinson and television personality David Nixon were heavily involved in initial promotion of the instruments. A number of other celebrities such as Princess Margaret were early adopters. The Mellotron became more popular after the Beatles used it on several tracks. It was subsequently adopted by the Moody Blues, King Crimson and Genesis, and became a common instrument in progressive rock. Later models such as the M400, the best selling model, dispensed with the accompaniments and some sound selection controls in order to be used by touring musicians. The instrument's popularity"
"prayer. Their tradition also links the sound of the wood to the wood of the Garden of Eden that caused Adam to fall when he plucked its fruit, and to the nailing to the wood of the cross of Jesus Christ, come to atone for Adam's transgression. Semantron The semantron or semandron (), or semanterion (σημαντήριον), also called a xylon (ξύλον) (; Russian: било, ""bilo""; Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian: клепало, ""klepalo""; Arabic: ناقوس) is a percussion instrument used in monasteries to summon the monastics to prayer or at the start of a procession. The instrument comes in three chief varieties: a"
"members of The Move and The Uglys formed the Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard. Birmingham-based tape recorder company, Bradmatic Ltd helped develop and manufacture the Mellotron. Over the next 15 years, the Mellotron had a major impact on rock music and is a trademark sound of the progressive rock bands. Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues worked for that company and it is one of the reasons why he introduced that instrument in the band, giving its very typical sound. Birmingham in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the birthplace of heavy metal music, whose international success as a"
"which contained looped tapes they made themselves. The Mellotron T550 model was apparently manufactured from 1981 to 1983. If the manufacturing dates are accurate then the Birotron is the ""Loop Mellotron"". Lastly the Birotron appears on the ""Mellodrama"" (2008) movie documentary soundtrack with two well-worn but worthwhile 1970's progressive rock era recordings made by inventor Dave Biro. The Birotron's looped sounds can be described as somewhat similar to the sounds of the Orchestron and keyboard section of the Optigan but have a far cleaner Mellotron- or Chamberlin-like timbre because of the tapes. The unique attack and decay systems for each"
"Melograph The Melograph, similar to the Melodiograph, is a mechanical apparatus for ethnomusicological transcription usually producing some sort of graph that can be preserved and filed, similar to a recording of music. Beginning with attempts by Milton Metfessel in 1928, assorted devices such as this have been developed or manufactured, the most notable dating back to the 1950s and situated at the University of California in Los Angeles (Charles Seeger), the University of Oslo (Olav Gurvin and Karl Dahlback), and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (Dalia Cohen and Ruth Katz). Melograph ""(aka"" pianograph, Eidomusikon, Phantasiermachine, notograph, Extemporising Machine) was a"
"normal range and, therefore, harder to play accurately. The F mellophone has tubing half the length of a French horn, which gives it an overtone series more similar to a trumpet and most other brass instruments. In summary, the mellophone is an instrument designed specifically to bring the approximate sound of a horn in a package which is conducive to playing while marching. Outside a marching setting, the traditional French horn is ubiquitous and the mellophone is rarely used, though they can be used to play French horn parts in a concert band or orchestra. C.G. Conn developed the 16E"
"M-Tron (a software instrument representation of a Mellotron), the Vienna Symphonic Library, and drums. He handles bass parts with a Rickenbacker bass as well as the Ztar. His production style is chiefly characterized by generous amounts of compression, loud recording levels, and a dense sonic arrangement wall which many have compared favorably with the likes of Joe Meek and Phil Spector. Although he always records digitally with Digital Performer, Ableton Live, Apple Logic Pro, and the Roland Corporation VSR-880, his sound is quite reminiscent of the warmth embodied in 1960s analog recording technique. In 2007, he acquired a Starr Labs"
"the theremin, which uses two metal antennas that sense the position of a player's hands and control oscillators for frequency with one hand, and amplitude (volume) to produce an eerie but difficult to manipulate sound. It was used by avant garde and classical musicians in the early twentieth century and was used on a large number of 1940s and 50s science fiction films and suspense. Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used practically in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, around the same time as rock music began to emerge as a distinct musical genre. The Mellotron, an"
"Melotron Melotron is a futurepop and synthpop band from Germany. In 1996 Andy Krueger, Edgar Slatnow and Kay Hildebrandt left their former band, The Vermin, to form Melotron. The band found success with their first single, ""Dein Meister,"" in 1998. Until 2007, Melotron was a band with mostly German-only lyrics (the chorus of the B-Side ""2 Young 2 Die"" on their inaugural single release, ""Dein Meister"", was sung in English amid German verses). However, on their album ""Propaganda"", ""Broken"" is sung entirely in English. Melotron has performed at a number of major electronic and industrial festivals, amongst these the Wave"