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Comment by Lio | Hacker News Reader

An article about the Mellotron that doesn’t mention King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King? Disgraceful! :P

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ukgraQ-xkp4&pp=ygUta2luZyBjcml...

One could also mention the Birotron. It was a mellotron-type instrument that Rick Wakeman had in the mid-seventies, but instead of the Mellotron strips of rewindable tape, it used 8-track tape housings to hold its tape.

The members of Yes are said to have pranked Rick one day, by swapping out all the tapes for commercial 8-tracks, so when he began to play it was a cacophony of pop songs overlaid onto each other, rather than the appropriate sounds. It's said that Wakeman was quite cross :)

(the instrument is heard on Tangerine Dream's album Force Majeure: strings and male choir https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afqgm3CzzQY )

Right? And King Crimson sold one of theirs to Tony Banks of Genesis. At least that's a claim here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mellotron I loved its use on The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

Or Michael Pinder from The Moody Blues. You know, the guy who also introduced the Mellotron to The Beatles?

Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark also used the Mellotron in the early 80s, all over Architecture and Morality and Dazzle Ships.

> But without actually having the confidence or the guts to work with a real choir we had to employ other means of trying to reproduce that massed choral sound, hence the Mellotrons.

For example the Mellotron provided the violin lead and choir background in their single Maid of Orleans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmwMhjbThKg

Or Led Zeppelin - The Rain Song.

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