We definitely need more VST's of these classic instruments before they vanish completely.

@rbrooks2007

11 ай бұрын

It's just what I was thinking about working on next. 😊

@Meteotrance

10 ай бұрын

There is an optigan soundbank aivable, they also have the master tape use for build the optical disc.

@rbrooks2007

10 ай бұрын

@@Meteotrance will people pay between $89.99 to $189.99 for the Optigan source material which a developer would have to purchase from the official Optigan site even if the VSTi was given away free?

@creeke_alley

10 ай бұрын

ioptigan app

@technopop1260

10 ай бұрын

yes yes yes i do😮😮😮

fudging amazing! you tracked one down, themz be awesome!

@Hainbach

11 ай бұрын

Absolutely! You gotta get some sun screen and head over to Italy to mate!

@adejupe8308

11 ай бұрын

He'll fit it in the back of the mini somehow 😂

@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER

11 ай бұрын

@@Hainbach ill need to go in winter hahaha. yeah blooomin awesome. btw im trying to find a magazine and reply about that machine you messaged about (not one int vid)!!! cus there is a very similar one i was researching but different, maybe itll make a surprise for the bach! such a cool machine the talentmaker

@PorchBass

11 ай бұрын

Tom waits organs for years!

@RiccardoPietroni

11 ай бұрын

We are waiting for you!

My dad was Mattel's director of product development. He left Mattel to become Optigan's marketing director. (He was responsible for such coups as getting Monty Hall to give one away on Let's Make A Deal.) This turned out to not be a great career move, but oh well. We had one in our home, of course. One thing the Optigan had that the Chilton does not is that there's a light that shone through the near-center of the disc and emerged in a little hole above the keyboard. There are four (or three, depending on the time signature of the chords) equidistant windows arranged around the center hole of the disc, one of them red. As a result you get a flashing visual indicator of the beat, a red dot on the downbeat and white ones on the rest. It looks like the Chilton's pitch control was better than the Optigan's, which was a thumbwheel controlling a worm gear, so that you could make fine adjustments in pitch but not broad ones. But! Here's something that works with the Optigan, and might with the Chilton. There's a linkage between the front door and the motor, so that the motor is stopped while you're changing disks, and goes back up to speed when you insert one and close the door. You can open the door slightly while you're playing, which will _reduce_ power to the motor, allowing you to introduce random warble, or, in the extreme position, get the same effect you got with half-speed playback on the Nagra. You've already discovered the double-disk trick. Try putting a disk in upside down. Making new disks was a crazy operation in the 1970s involving very expensive computer time and plotters. It seems like today it would be a relatively small matter of programming. Making an image of concentric soundtracks and printing them out as an image that can be transfered to a transparent acetate disk seems well within the skill set of someone who knows a bit about graphics software and printing. The biggest technical challenge is transforming the imagery of the sampled soundtrack into a circle whose circumference is comprised of the entirety of the soundtrack, so that everything plays back in sync and at the right pitch. Our Optigan did not survive a cross-country move, and in 1981 there wasn't an appetite for this instrument anymore, so instead of finding someone to repair it we relegated it to the barn in my family's old farmhouse in Maine, where it was not really protected from the elements enough. I'm sad to say we ended up breaking it down with a sledgehammer to make it easier to take to the dump.

@Hainbach

11 ай бұрын

Thank you so much for sharing, that is wonderful information!

@5roundsrapid263

11 ай бұрын

At 3:54 he puts the disk upside down.

@RiccardoPietroni

10 ай бұрын

Nice story! Thanks! The product site was in Italy in the Gem Factory. Do you have some informations?

All of those early ”samplers” sound so magical. A friend of mine have managed to collect Optigan, Orchestron, Talentmaker and a bunch of Mellotrons and there is something mezmerizing with the grit and wobbliness of the physical media producing the sounds. Gets me every time ❤

@duncan-rmi

11 ай бұрын

that's a fairly small number of people.... is his name brian? or pea? 😂

@gusseDSX

11 ай бұрын

@@duncan-rmi Nope. Mattias in Roth Händle Studios (Stockholm/Sweden)

@duncan-rmi

11 ай бұрын

@@gusseDSX yeah, he was my next guess! I was on the old mellotronists mailing list years ago, when there was the 'range war' going on over ownership... this was long before nord or the softsynth versions, & while people were still fighting over the master tapes. I have some of the old TD sets in my collection, but the poor old thing pretty much stays at home these days.

@mannkejns4355

11 ай бұрын

@@gusseDSX I just saw his band Änglagård recently in his studio, and the studio was just filled with a million different synthesizers and keyboards, i've never been in a cooler place. Änglagård were also amazing

@gusseDSX

11 ай бұрын

@@mannkejns4355 I was at one of the two shows in the studio as well. Awesome concert and magical chaotic studio

Is there anything more satisfying than Hainbach exploring strange, vintage gear? I love how you made it sound like you with the Nagra and experiments. Wonderful stuff. Edit: The triple disc! My word, what a sound.

@Hainbach

11 ай бұрын

Thank you buddy!

This video just solved a personal mystery! I have an early childhood memory of handling what appeared to be floppy, translucent, record albums, and could never figure out what I was recalling. My grandpa had an Optigan organ in his garage, which I used to play around with as a child. When you pulled out the discs, those memories came flooding back.

David Lynch, Devo, Kraftwerk... All of their art resonates deeply with my soul, and so does this piece of gear, wow, i really wish i could get my hands on this thing

@Hainbach

6 ай бұрын

Look at Panoptigon, new remake of this

Someone should make a plugin with these sounds. Someone should also design a plugin that 'Opticalizes' any sound coming in. It's absolutely magical.

@Hainbach

11 ай бұрын

Yeah the latter would really interest me. You can get the Geforce Mellotron plugin with the Optigan expansion. The sounds are there. And I have an artist pack with them, too, with my own sounds: www.gforcesoftware.com/products/hainbach-artist-expansion/

@synthgal1090

11 ай бұрын

god, a sampling software that could emulate the "masking" effect of layering two discs on each other would be fucking amazing.

@creeke_alley

11 ай бұрын

@@optigandotcomwill it include talent maker and orchestron for the Plug-in?

@oldmanthompson

11 ай бұрын

There is already an iOS version of the Optigan it’s great fun and has many discs available. 😊

@PC0067

10 ай бұрын

Ça fait rêver des premiers SF.

8:35 oh wow, that doubled up sound is incredible!

"It's a Wonderful LIfe" by Sparklehorse is one of my all time favourite albums - Optigan/Orchestron plus Chamberlin and Mellotron. Hard to know what is used where but your examples really reminded me of that record. The stuff that happens when you turn the disk upside down or put in 2 is so cool. Thanks for giving us a chance to see it in action. The idea of a large floppy optical disk seemed so ridiculous to me but the analogy to film sound makes perfect sense now

@danield9488

11 ай бұрын

❤ Sparklehorse too

@bradshawvincent

10 ай бұрын

Yes I got the Sparklehorse connection! So sad he left us too soon.

@atrus3823

12 күн бұрын

I had no idea Sparklehorse used these (or frankly that they even existed), but the second I heard that sound, I thought, "that sounds like 'It's a Wonderful Life'". Looked it up, and sure enough, that's what they used! Pretty cool.

What a wonderful instrument, and around 5:15 when you were leaning on the keyboard reminded me of sounds on a record of sounds effects I bought in the 80's from the BBC radiophonic workshop.

You have everything you need in a single machine to entertain all of your guests at the coctail party.

I knew id heard the samples on this before. Jon Brion used it for the soundtrack of eternal sunshine, specifically the song Phone Call. Such a beautiful sound

I had fun watching this, I can't imagine how much fun this must be to explore in person! Great work!

Cool Idea, nice that it was realized and is honored and presented here. Thanks man, again!

This is the most amazing machine, that I have ever seen! The grunge of age, gives the loops such an eerie ambience. They've matured to perfection. xo

That is amazing. What sounds it creates! It is both magical and enchanting! 😌❤️ Thank you for the video!

Fascinating. Thank you for this.

That bit at the end is like an alternative history of EDM if it developed 40 years earlier

Absolutely love it.

That's the most idiophonic instrument I've ever heard, the keyboard sounds you got from putting a second disk in it were so fragile, warm and intimate !

Ein überaus faszinierendes Instrument! Ich erinnere mich an einen Besuch der Musikmesse Frankfurt anfang der 70er, wo ich dieses Instrument live erleben konnte, erst heute habe ich durch dieses Video erfahren, wie es funktioniert. Herzlichen Dank dafür ❣️

It would be awesome to bring these back. I love the way this sounds.

As a big Optiganally Yours fan, this makes me very happy!

Wonderful instrument, delightful video! Rare machine, thanks for showing it to us!

Thank You Heinbach!

I can think of no one more perfect to demonstrate this amazing instrument ❤

I love my Sennheiser MD-21. It's been my desk mic for 15 years.

@Hainbach

11 ай бұрын

I love them - one is always with me, and the other is always on my old AKAI sampler

This thing is super cool and it seems to have endless possibilities within it

Amazing find, this will keep you busy for a while!!!!

This is one of your finest finds Great review sir The sounds have use man!

Sounds like a miracle. Pure genius!

Apparently on Beautiful World by Devo they had an Optigan & had every disc it came with stacked on top of eachother. Apparently you can also get acetate sheets & cut them into circles & free hand squiggles onto them in felt tip pen & get some interesting sounds.

@JimPoltrone

11 ай бұрын

I once read an interview with Mark Mothersbaugh back in the early '80s. In one of the segments, he talked about putting in the disks in an Orchestron backwards (or upside down) and having it make sucking sounds.

Wow, this is very impressive, what a interesting concept !!!

The band Optagonally Yours is fantastic!!!!

This is so incredibly cool

Would be fun to have two of the same discs, with one upside down to get a forward/reverse effect - fascinating!

@RiccardoPietroni

11 ай бұрын

I’ll try tomorrow! Great idea!

Karl Bartos (Kraftwerk) was given a Vako Orchestron, and it soon became his favorite instrument for years

The Rhythms and sounds are so space age pop/exotica such a cool machine thanks so much for sharing.

Huge mad props 👌 for mentioning coil. That's a group that deserves so much more love than it gets! 🙏🙏🙏✌️

@parasiteunit

11 ай бұрын

Coil did a better mix of NIN closer than anyone should of been capable of. The film 7even was improved by the track's very presence.

@maxmatson1578

11 ай бұрын

@@parasiteunit Amen brother!!!🙏🙏🙏 I'm on the same wavelength of that emotion 👍 the coil mixes that they did for nails change my LIFE!!! and is what led me to them. after I heard those mixes I got "black light district" and "unnatural history" 1 and 2 and never looked back! 🎹🎚️🎛️🎧😵‍💫👌... R.i.p. John and Peter 🙏✋✌️

Love the sound!

Love it!

Every time I see u make one of these videos I feel like you could make the perfect dungeon synth album with whatever lofi instrument you’re using in it!

Glad to have you BACH.....

Hipsters loved Optigan samples. I used to hear them all the time in commercials about a decade ago. Although the audio quality was much worse, the big advantage with these optical disc organs is that you could play the samples repeatedly, whereas the tapes in a Mellotron would run out after about 7 to 8 seconds and stop until you gave them time to rewind. I remember reading that the engineers who worked on the Optigan planned ways to improve the audio quality of the optical discs, such as pre-emphasis and noise reduction, but since Mattel (who manufactured it) was a toy company, they couldn't justify the expense to implement these features. And in the '90s, someone found the original studio master tapes that were used to produce the Optigan discs (most of which were recorded in Germany), and used them to make perfect digital-quality versions of them, but people still prefer the lo-fi sound of the real ones.

@stevethepocket

10 ай бұрын

Oh yeah, I remember seeing some commercial in 2015 or so that used, I think it was the "Swing It!" disk's samples, and being like "Ooh I should email Pea Hix about that so he can find the KZread copy and post it on his blog" and then I never did. Also someone made a royalty-free backing track out of the "da-da-di-da"s from "Singing Rhythm" and Lindsay Ellis used it a few times in her videos.

Interesting device with nice sounds. Thanks for presenting to us 👍

Beautiful sound

So much haunting beauty! And at other times you anticipate a phat beat dropping in at any second.

Get in touch if you ever want to author sounds for a new Optigan disc! :)

@Hainbach

11 ай бұрын

Oh you do that! Can you send me an email to Hainbach101 at gmail.com?

@optigandotcom

11 ай бұрын

@@Hainbach we've been making new Optigan & Orchestron discs since 2008. We even make a new instrument called Panoptigon to play them more reliably than the old hardware. We've yet to make any new Talentmaker titles because there are so few Talentmakers out there that the demand is very minimal. Anyway, we'll send an email!

Incredible!! This NEEDS to be an AudioThing plugin 😉

Sounds great.

Yup a gnarly sounding keyboard that uses optical discs & will make great space themed chill tunes!🙂👍🙂 Sounds great!🎵🎵🎵

I love those sounds

So so nice! I love this one in Sparklehorse songs, specially in “It’s a Wonderful Life” ❤

I absolutely adore these types of machines, i def don't have room now but I can hope for one day to have my own space just for sounds

wow it sounds so authentic, exactly the analog tone you want from an analog machine. some tape machines ive heard dont even produce this sort of texture and coloring.

What an absolute beauty Also your enjoyment of it was infections

I love this thing ❤

thanks for the discovery

this thing makes some really crazy sounds!

I love all the music you made on it.

@Hainbach

11 ай бұрын

Thank you! It was a surprise to me how much I enjoyed it. Did not go in with high expectations. Here are all the tracks, mastered and slightly better mixed than in the video: hainbach.bandcamp.com/album/talentmaker-takes

This machine is freaking fantastic. Layering of the discs, even in reverse is such a nice hack!

Sounds wicked and full of character 👍

I love these ancient machines, harking back to "modern" film makers and theatrical sound fun. Thanks for your review

Steve Hackett used these on his first solo albums and live concerts. Really amazing sound, then and now.

I really like your work, greetings from Rome

Thank you for bringing this little gem to our attention. But mostly thank you for taking the lid off and showing us the detail of how it worked. The innovations in music making pre-digital or even pre micro electronics are just amazing. The cross over between film and music here is magic. I wonder if there is a way to fabricate new and exciting discs for that by inkjet printing on a clear film...

This is very cool!

This is so lo-fi it is glorious. Recording the sounds of this keyboard with a Nagra makes me laugh. Hi fidelity lo-fi. Thanx as always Hainbach.

3:20 Holy shit that's gloriously depressing. Really powerful, especially if you're backing a visual medium like film or stage.

I had two Optigon keyboards in my studio at one time, purely by coincidence. There was a folder with a set of those plastic discs. We used them to try and find that weird overdub to give a song that magical lo fi thing that everyone loves but nobody can figure out what it is.

The main advantage of the Orchestron or this Chilton Talentmaker over the Mellotron was loops. On a Melotron your playback time is roughly 8 seconds only, the length of the piece of tape, hence you can't get a long sustained choir pad like, the most known, Radioactivity made with a Vako Orchestron. Some of the Orchestrons sample libraries were actulay made with the same sonic material as the one used for the Mellotron. The drawback of course is you don't get any attack or envelop from the sampled instrument, you play somewhere on the loop.

@duncan-rmi

11 ай бұрын

I've been in the studio with so many people borrowing my m400, & always tell them "eight seconds is longer than you think!"

@tonycowin

11 ай бұрын

@@duncan-rmi Yep eight seconds is a long time within the context of a song.

@FLH3official

11 ай бұрын

​@@duncan-rmi Yes, most of the time 🙂

So cool mashine! Sounds so msgical!

It's always fun to take an instrument and do unimaginable or unintended things with it. You can come up with some amazing sounds sometimes.

lovely

70s lofi indeed fascinating

The sequence at 1:43 reminded me Brian Eno's _I'll come running to tie your shoes_ from Another Green World album.

I was a massive fan of Sparklehorse back in the day and I can definitely hear this instrument in his Lo Fi tracks. Of course I had no idea it was this producing the sounds!

So this must be the secret behind "Slow 30's Room" by David Lynch and Dean Hurley 😮

@yorkshireteafan

11 ай бұрын

It's the Big Band Beat Optigan disc. There's a demo of it on KZread

@krytikal5615

11 ай бұрын

Was scrolling to see if anybody else had noticed this..

That is a really cool and interesting sound machine. What makes it even better is that it's not the Miami Sound Machine.

instand portishead and silenthill vibes. love it!

Oh 😍 I so love the Mellotron. However, I kinda love this more. The best part it putting the 2 sample discs together. Thank you, Hainbach, for this precious moment of history. I hope to see more of this iconic machine 🙏🏼 Humbled 🙂

Thank you.

Lovely

looking forward to seeing your collab with Tom Waits

Goldfrapp-y vibes.. beautiful

Holy Guacamole, ... Not a clue this thing existed, and I am 54 and deeply into music in my teens till late twenties, having played in 3-4 bands along the way ... And I am German!!!! ... I should know this, but no!!! ..... Just goes to show that you should know your music history so you don't sound ignorant (not stupid!) as me in this post ... Learn! Listen! Enjoy! ... So much to learn! .... Thanks for this video!

I used to repair Optigans in the 70s. Horribly crude mechanisms but surprisingly effective. They needed a stepdown transformer to operate in Australia (240 to 110 volts) and the drive motor would overheat due to running on 50Hz rather than 60Hz. The motor running on a partial DC supply (for the speed control) didn't help either.

This is one of those gem pieces of gear you can’t believe you haven’t heard of. Holy god

best music instruments best best best super excellent 70s style of music very very very touchy

Love the bonus crackle. Reminds me of my 78 rpm discs. Very much part the experience. Vinyl is so passe. Shellac is it, Baby.

I think these disks may be a format that Techmoan actually hasn't covered yet, quite astonishing ;-)

@optigandotcom

11 ай бұрын

We've suggested it to him, but he felt it was a bit too niche for him.

love this - very 70s!

11:17 sounds awesome!

Very cool. The Mellotron Sound Card 4 for use in their digital M4000D Mellotron series has 128 total sounds from the Talentmaker, Optigan and Orchestron instruments. Most are Lo-Fi, but some are cleaned up Hi-Fi versions from the master tapes. Great fun to play with!

5:15 1960's sci fi movie/tv sound effect. Like some gadget doing a thing on original Star Trek, etc

Very cool😊

Very nice! Greetings from Germany!

"If it's not Kraftwerk I don't want to know what German band is!" - woah, so harsh! One might even say uncalled for ;D. Love this video!

Listen to the EP I made with the Talentmaker here: hainbach.bandcamp.com/album/talentmaker-takes