Argghh! A Keyboard Topic! Out! Out!

[ozboomer]

Acshually...

Being of 'a certain age', y'just haveta appreciate when you discover beautiful instruments from your era that you've never seen before...

Some may be familiar with my history of nut-ism about animation and the musical cues and themes from the TV shows of my (1960s) childhood... and p'raps even how I went gaga when I discovered a whole architectural style that combined a couple of favourite cartoon shows ... 'The Jetsons' + 'The Flintstones' = Googie Architecture... I even had a web site up for a short while about it: The Flat-Top Project: Background

...but I recently fell over some info about an instrument I never heard of... being a 'Jetsons' Fender Rhodes electric piano:-

  

Matrix Synth: 1969 Fender Rhodes Student Piano.. "Jetsons" Model

Reverb.com: 1969 Fender Rhodes - Student Model (finished)

Reverb.com: Fender Rhodes Student Piano 1969 (aka Fishtail / Jetsons) in Avocado Green (serviced) (currently current)

Vintage "GAS" is strong here...

[newey]

I was certainly aware of the Fender Rhodes piano back in the '60s, but I had never seen the "Jetsons model" before. Very cool.

Vintage keyboards are interesting. Back in the 1980s, I used to jam with a guy who had a Mellotron, that thing was also way cool. I can't play keyboards, but a vintage Farfisa organ or a Vox Continental would fit real nicely in the music room . . . . Of course, nowadays, a synth can do all those things and more, and in a smaller, lighter package, but there's something about old analog stuff that tugs at my heartstrings.

[ozboomer]

The development of the Mellotron (or Chamberlin... or Novatron) is such an interesting story... One of many articles out there:

The Mellotron: A Brief History from Analog Beginnings to the Digital Realm

I only really learnt about the instrument when I was listening to Isao Tomita's "Daphnis et Chloe" and how he created the sound; specifically:

Sound Creature: Daphnis et Chloe: Choir Sounds



It never twigged with me that I (probably) first heard it on the introduction to the Beatles' 'Strawberry Fields Forever'... but that sound was flutes, not voices... and in those days, Mellotron = choirs for me... (!)

[newey]

The Mellotron had a 3-way rotary switch to switch between 3 different voices. One was the strings sound, one was horns/woodwinds, the other was the vocal chorus. The way it worked, each key had an 8-sec strip of magnetic tape with the three tracks. My friend had pulled out all the tape strips and re-recorded over one of the three tracks- the chorus, as I recall. Instead he put like random snippets of crowd noise, dialog, etc. on the one track. He was very into experimental music, and the third setting on his was certainly very bizarre. But I was always amazed that he had put that much time and effort into it, as he had to re-record each tape strip for each of the keys (48? 54? Don't recall right now how many keys it had).