#orchestron

[tymime]

The concept for this song and 75% of the instrumentation came to me in a dream.

[ragedaisy]

I was today years old when I learned about the Orchestron, a keyboard instrument with an optical disc, which was used by Kraftwerk for things like the choir effect in 'Radioactivity'. (I would have guessed they used a Mellotron, (which is also a nifty instrument which uses tape loops instead)).

[dunwichradio]

Orchestron Weird instrument that sounds a bit like a Mellotron but instead of tapes it uses something that looks like flexi-discs as soundsource. 

[christineleakey]

This is the Orchestron which is not featured on my album Tapping Trees in a Trinket Box of Treasure as much as I'd hoped. What was meant to be a 3 day recording session became a 1.5 day session as the keyboards arrived a day late to the studio. It was also very muggy weather which impacted the quality of sound and the studio rented wasn't cool enough so that was a challenge for the time crunch. 

Anyhow, as you can hear, this was mostly used with Kraftwerk and some of the sounds I had intended on using for the album had never been recorded on an album before. There is a bit of Orchestron on my album that you can hear though… You will just have to purchase my CD to find out in the liner notes! ;) Or see if you can hear any of the sounds on my album here: http://christineleakey.bandcamp.com. The way I used these organs were quite delicate. 

This keyboard is similar to the Optigan that I used with disks and disks from the Optigan are playable on the Orchestron but not fully functional. This was a more serious machine for its time compared to the Optigan which I believe was created for more of a home use purpose.