McCartney Times

Before analogue synthesisers began to dominate 1970s rock, the instrument of choice for the era’s prog heavyweights was the novel Mellotron keyboard. Famed for its uniquely weathered and warm textures, the Mellotron’s innovative bank of samples and pleasing aural flutters and warbles lent a distinct aura to many a psychedelic pop record of the day, used extensively by Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Yes, and Genesis.The Mellotron’s original concept was developed in America by musician and inventor Harry Chamberlin in the early 1950s. Building a keyboard that played a series of taped pre-recordings of real orchestra instruments, any given ‘voice’ could be selected by a switch and ‘played’ by hitting the key that would spin the audio in the desired note or pitch. While complex and wieldy, Chamberlin’s representative Bill Fransen travelled to the UK in search of engineering expertise to improve the mysterious machine, heading to Birmingham’s Bradmatic Ltd to begin prototyping.

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Source: The strange story of John Lennon’s Mellotron