Optiganally Yours Quotes

The optigan, like the mellotron and chamberlin, was essentially an early iteration of what we call sampling technology today. While the mellotron and chamberlin used magnetic tape to play back pre-recorded sounds from a keyboard, the optigan used a cheaper technology- LP-sized celluloid discs with concentric rings of optical soundtrack waveform encoded on it. This is the same technology used in optical film soundtracks. Since the optigan was set up like a typical home organ, you had accompaniment patterns in a variety of styles to go along with the keyboard. Each disc represented a different style of music, ie bossa nova, country, etc. the key difference was that the optigan played back looped recordings of real instruments, as opposed to electronically generated tones and drum sounds. The technology had severe sound quality limitations, though, so the optigan never sounded much better than an AM radio. But it's that very haunting lo-fi murkiness that instantly attracted me to the sound. it just has a huge amount of character and mystery. 
Pea Hicks