Treff

Mellotron : the machine and the musicians that revolutionised rock

Awde, Nick

2008 . - Bok . - 590 sider

Fra omslaget: "Meet the world's first workable sampler and the musicians who unlocked its potential. Many of their number confess to a love-hate relationship with the ecentric keyboard and yet found genius in its unpredictability ... The Mellotron changed music forever when it appeared in the 60s. Long before the advent of synthesizers, this extraordinary keyboard revolutionised rock and pop music. For the first time, it brought a potentially unlimited range of sounds to a musician’s fingertips. As the world’s first sampler, its pre-recorded tapes included everything from a symphony orchestra and church choir to samba combo and rock’n’roll drum rhythms. Those sounds created legendary moments such as the dreamy flutes intro to the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever and the soaring strings on the Moody Blues’ Nights in White Satin. By the 70s the Mellotron had become an icon of progressive rock and its haunting tones found a climax in classics like Genesis’s Watcher of the Skies and Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir. Today it has experienced a renaissance after being championed by acts like Paul Weller and Radiohead. Covering subjects as wide as the baby boomer generation, the Swinging 60s, Sgt. Pepper, Hendrix, Holst’s The Planets and the advent of punk and disco, top musicians describe how they were inspired by the unpredictable keyboard affectionately dubbed ‘The Beast’, explaining too why the Mellotron and post-war society in the UK created a unique melting pot that made the world rock to a British beat."

786.59 A