Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Vako Orchestron Optical Disc Playback Sampler
YouTube via peahix. Sent my way via Pea.
"Here's a demo of all 8 discs that were made for the Vako Orchestron. This keyboard, which is adapted from the Mattel Optigan, was introduced in 1975 by Dave VanKoevering. It was intended to be a competitor to the Mellotron, but it never really took off. Kraftwerk was a very early adopter of this instrument. I've included little examples of some of the well-known parts Kraftwerk used their Orchestron for back in the day.
My Orchestron is in fairly average working condition. You'll note that I had a bit of trouble with one of the high F keys. Also, note the substantial level of radio interference, which I've muted during disc changes.
Anyone interested in more information about the Orchestron and related instruments can find lots of stuff at my website, www.optigan.com."
7 comments:
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MATRIXSYNTH - EVERYTHING SYNTH
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Boy, that sure killed my lust for an Orchestron, holy no fidelity, Batman. Dude sure loves him some Tchaikovsky and Brubeck, don't he. Two-point deduction for bad chromatic scale fingering, though.
ReplyDeleteI must have an Optigan!
ReplyDeleteHuge kudos to Pea for making this video - really well done, and like Milo, I realize I no longer need one of these. ;-) Definitely time to dust off the ol' Optigan though.
ReplyDelete"Boy, that sure killed my lust for an Orchestron"
ReplyDeleteYou had lust for an Orchestron? :)
The website this guy has is PHENOMENAL! When I stumbled across an Optigan in a St. Vincent DePaul store, it was this guy's website that told me everything I needed to know about maintenance, disc sets, and just about anything else you ever wanted to know about the "betamax" of the keyboard world. I'm still waiting for someone to develop software that will enable you to print your own discs from overhead transparencies from your printer.
ReplyDeleteJust curious if the Optigan Project owner hangs out 'round here...
ReplyDeletehttp://optiganproject.wildfreshness.com/
Good to see progress finally occurring in this area - always felt like folks would pick up the R&D baton, then quickly lose interest. Better yet will be when new discs are finally out there. ;-)
Thanks for the link to my Optigan blog walkathon. The project is stuck in neutral at the moment since I recently switched jobs and my free time has been curtailed. Here is what I've discovered so far: it's possible to make a copy of an existing Optigan disc by scanning it at a high resolution (600 dpi or more) and then printing it on 13" x 19" laser transparency. The copy will play back, but not at the same fidelity as the original (which was pretty bad to begin with). One of the most challenging issues I've faced is find decent transparency stock. The stuff I have now is kind of thin and floppy, which leads to problems getting the copied disc to spin properly. But by far the biggest challenged, as Pea has pointed out before, is the issue of registration. It seems like a really silly thing, but just getting the center hole punched out correctly is very difficult. It's possible this could be the reason my copies don't sound quite like the originals. Anyway, I'll continue testing and posting to the blog when I have time.
ReplyDelete