Dead
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Subject: Dead Media Working Note 08.2
Dead media: the Optigan, the Opsonar, the Orchestron; the
Mellotron, the Chamberlin
From: strecker_AT_sirius.com (Candi Strecker)
Source: an essay by musician and collector Pea Hicks,
available on the World Wide Web:
http://redwood.northcoast.com/~shojo/Optigan/ph.html
For further info on Optigans, seek out The Optigan Page
at:
http://redwood.northcoast.com/~shojo/Optigan/optigan.html
(Candi Strecker:)
(((The Optigan was a musical instrument produced for the
home-organ consumer market in the early 1970s, using a
radically different optical technology to produce its
sounds. The "Dead Medium" in this case would probably be
the optically-readable disks from which the Optigan "read"
and generated its sounds.
The following information is extracted from a much
longer (and very delightful) essay by musician/composer
Pea Hicks of San Diego, describing his epic quest for
Optigans and information about them.)))
(Pea Hicks:)
About ten years ago I first became aware of the
existence of the Optigan. It was in the tenth anniversary
edition of Keyboard magazine. In an article on the past
and future of keyboards and synthesizers, there was a
brief reference to the Optigan, and it stuck in my mind
for years as it was the first time I had ever seen the
word 'cheesy.'
The Optigan was a kind of home organ made by the
Optigan Corporation (a subsidiary of Mattel) in the early
70's. It was set up like most home organs of the period =
a small keyboard with buttons on the left for various
chords, accompaniments and rhythms.
At the time, all organs produced their sounds
electrically or electronically with tubes or transistors.
The Optigan was different in that its sounds were read off
of LP-sized celluloid discs which contained the graphic
waveforms of real instruments.
These recordings were encoded in concentric looping
rings using the same technology as film soundtracks.
Remember that sequence in *Fantasia* where the Soundtrack
makes a cameo? Those squiggly lines are actually pretty
close to what the real thing looks like. As the film runs,
a light is projected through the soundtrack and is picked
up on the other side by a photoreceptor. The voltage is
varied depending on how much light reaches the receptor,
and after being amplified this voltage is converted into
audible sound by the speakers. The word 'Optigan' stands
for 'Optical Organ.'
Optigan discs have 57 rings of soundtrack = these
provide recordings of real musicians playing riffs, chord
patterns and other effects. (37 of the tracks are reserved
for the keyboard sound itself = a different recording for
each note.) So when you want to play a bossa nova, you
don't get those wimpy little pop-pop-chink-chink
electronic sounds = you actually hear a live combo backing
you up! This was a pretty unique concept for the early
70's.
Technically speaking, the Optigan was a primitive
sampler. Sort of. I tend to think of it more like an
ultra-poor-man's Mellotron or Chamberlin. These are two
famous keyboards from the fifties and sixties which played
back recordings of instruments on lengths of magnetic
tape. These two became very popular despite some huge
drawbacks.
For one thing, the tapes only lasted a few seconds
and could not loop. If you wanted your flute to keep
playing, you would have to re-press the key after eight
seconds. This also involved waiting for the tape to
rewind, so fast playing was generally not possible. Also,
the racks of tapes themselves were pretty huge and
unwieldy = changing from a choir to an oboe was quite an
undertaking compared to what today's machines can do. Not
surprisingly, these instruments were quite expensive to
buy and maintain. But the sounds they made were worth it =
at least at the time.
Mattel marketed the Optigan as something of an adult
toy = the sound quality was simply not good enough for
professional use. They sold mostly through stores like
Sears and JC Penney and were relatively inexpensive =
about $150 to $300 depending on which model you chose.
They came with a "Starter Set" of four discs, and
extra discs were marketed like records. Official Optigan
music books were also available to help you make the most
out of the minimal talent you probably had if you had
bought an Optigan in the first place.
The first thing you notice about the Optigan (if you
have any imagination at all, that is) is how malleable
this technology was. You can do all sorts of things with
the discs to sabotage the sound = put them in upside down,
put several in at once, manually stop and start them with
your hands for record scratch effects, press all the
buttons at once, and so on.
Most of the sounds that were recorded for the keyboard
section are different kinds of sustained organs. Since the
disc spins constantly, the sounds just keep looping around
and around. So the keyboard sounds can't have a beginning
and end per se. [...] Some of the discs even have non-
musical sound effects (such as applause) on them.
You would think that, since the discs are not played
by physical contact, there would be no pops or scratches
such as on vinyl records. But this is not the case =
tiny scratches on the discs cause irregular diffractions
of light which in turn end up sounding exactly like record
scratches! Most of the time, though, this actually
improves the sound. You get the weird feeling that you're
listening to a cheesy old Enoch Light record, but you're
actually controlling where the music goes!
[...] Mattel only produced the machines (at a factory
in Compton, nonetheless) for a couple of years. They
didn't sell very well because of several design flaws
which made them amazingly unreliable and prone to breaking
down. Eventually Mattel sold the whole works to the Miner
Company of New York (an organ manufacturer). They
continued production of the Optigan under the company name
of Opsonar and also produced several new discs.
But the design remained the same, and its inherent
problems forced the Miner company to drop the machine as
well. Later, the technology was bought by a company called
Vako which made an instrument called the Orchestron. This
was designed for professional use, but the sound quality
still sucked. They made about 50 of these machines before
they folded.
Candi Strecker strecker_AT_sirius.com
"putting up Burma-Shave signs along the information
superhighway"
Dead
Media | 0.01-02.0 | 02.1-04.0
| 04.1-06.0 | 06.1-08.0 |
08.1-10.0 | 10.1-12.0 |