Mike Pinder was a founding member, and once the keyboardist, of the band The Moody Blues. Pinder passed recently. Mr. Pinder was an acolyte of the weird instrument, The Mellotron. What was The Mellotron? I asked ChatGPT to provide some illumination. Here is what they said: A Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in the early 1960s. It works by triggering prerecorded sounds stored on magnetic tape when a musician presses the keys on its keyboard. Each key on the Mellotron is connected to a tape playing a recording of an instrument, such as strings, flutes, or choirs, allowing [More]
At one time, Phil Spector was one of the most innovative music producers in the world. He utilized an approach where he would hire a hire a group of musicians to carry out his musical ideas in the recording studio and literally create orchestras with multiple guitarists, keyboard players, percussionists, singers and what have you. The resultant thick sonic tapestry became known as The Wall of Sound. It was an influential technique that caught the ear of Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys. Wilson would pursue similar orchestrations of instruments using The Wrecking Crew, a group of accomplished players for [More]
Sadly, multi instrumentalist Peter Tork of The Monkees fame has passed at 77. Pete contributed bass, guitar, banjo, keyboards and vocals to The Monkees’ recordings and live shows. Depicted in the show as the simple minded one, in actuality Tork was quite the opinionated “thinker”. Pete passed an audition to become one of the four members of a prefabricated band to appear in a weekly television show copying the Beatles massive cultural appeal in the late 1960’s. Tork did have the ability to play an actual musical instrument which is more then can be said of half of the other [More]