Vako Orchestron – Vocal Choir
This is the “Vocal Choir” sound on a Vako Orchestron model C, with hi-cut, lo-cut and pitch altering.
Sometimes I have a small pitch stability problem, this is due to a worn out belt in the motor part.
Background information:
The Optigan was a kind of home organ made by the Optigan Corporation (a subsidiary of Mattel) in the early 70′s. It was set up like most home organs of the period- a small keyboard with buttons on the left for various chords, accompaniments and rhythms. At the time, all organs produced their sounds electrically or electronically with tubes or transistors. The Optigan was different in that its sounds were read off of LP sized celluloid discs which contained the graphic waveforms of real instruments. These recordings were encoded in concentric looping rings using the same technology as film soundtracks. (Remember that sequence in Fantasia where the Soundtrack makes a cameo? Those squiggly lines are actually pretty close to what the real thing looks like.) As the film runs, a light is projected through the soundtrack and is picked up on the other side by a photoreceptor. The voltage is varied depending on how much light reaches the receptor, and after being amplified this voltage is converted into audible sound by the speakers. The word “Optigan” stands for “Optical Organ.”
Optigan discs have 57 rings of soundtrack- these provide recordings of real musicians playing riffs, chord patterns and other effects. (37 of the tracks are reserved for the keyboard sound itself- a different recording for each note.) So when you want to play a bossa nova, you don’t get those wimpy little pop-pop-chink-chink electronic sounds- you actually hear a live combo backing you up! The problem is that you only have a limited number of chords to choose from- C, D, E, F, G, A and Bb major, plus their parallel minor and diminished counterparts. (Actually, E and A major don’t really count, because for economic reasons (or maybe avant-garde musical reasons, depending on how optimistic you are) they decided to recycle the D diminished chord for E major and the G diminished chord for A major. I guess they felt that most of the notes matched anyway, so why waste the extra disc space? Consequently, playing anything in A or E major sounds really questionable at best.)
Playing back recorded instruments was a pretty unique concept for the early 70′s. Technically speaking, the Optigan was a primitive sampler. Sort of. I tend to think of it more like a poor-man’s Mellotron or Chamberlin. These are two famous keyboards from the sixties which played back recordings of instruments on lengths of magnetic tape. They became very popular despite some huge drawbacks. For one thing, the tapes only lasted a few seconds and, in the case of the Mellotron, could not loop. If you wanted your flute to keep playing, you would have to re-press the key after eight seconds. This also involved waiting for the tape to rewind, so up-tempo playing was generally not possible. Also, the racks of tapes themselves were pretty huge and unwieldy- changing from a choir to an oboe could take quite some time. Not surprisingly, these instruments were quite expensive to buy and maintain. But the sounds they made were worth it- and apparently still are, seeing as the current street value can easily exceed $2000.
Mattel marketed the Optigan as something of an adult toy- the sound quality was simply not good enough for professional use. They sold mostly through stores like Sears and JC Penny and were relatively inexpensive- about $200 to $400 depending on which model you chose. They came with a “Starter Set” of four discs, and extra discs were marketed like record albums. Official Optigan music books were also available to help you make the most out of the minimal talent you probably had if you had bought an Optigan in the first place. One of these books even has a spiffy arrangement of “Spanish Flea” (“for advanced players only”) that includes all of the lyrics!
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