Unless you were an audio applied scientist in the ‘ 60s , you ’ve probably forgotten about the Mellotron , an archaic sampling station that play back sounds stored on charismatic magnetic tape when you pressed a key on a keyboard .
But in the fine tradition of hack old hardware to make electronic music , somebody ’s now break and reinvented the Mellotron , using a slenderly more modern gadget : The cassette player .
Meet the Crudman : A modern ( ish ) take on the Mellotron , invented , but of course , in Brooklyn . It ’s a series of hacked cassette instrumentalist , load up with tapes that can take individual , droning shade , spoken words , or whatever other samples you center desires . The players have been re - engineer with an Arduino - free-base Teensy microcontroller that responds to MIDI signals from a keyboard . Simply bid a winder , and the tape motor speeds up or slow down down to generate a musical note .
The overall effect is a Mellotron - esque synth that sounds fairly spooky — especially when you start add multiple cassette players and building chord ! Just another reminder that older hardware is always good for something , good ? If you ’re interested in doing this yourself , the hacker behind the Crudman haslaid out the instructions online . You ’re go to demand to read them carefully .
[ Motherboard ]
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