Optigan.com has introduced four new sound discs for the Optigan ‘optical organ’, a keyboard from 1971 that played back optically-encoded audio samples.
The Optigan plays flexible sound disks, which look a bit like xrays, but have samples encoded on them as circular patterns. The resulting sound plays back with a unique, lo fi quality.
In addition to encoded sounds, the discs generally include chord accompaniment patterns and beats.
The new discs include:
Fuzz Rock:
Gamelesque:
Spike’s Joint:
Country Folk in 6/8:
Gamelesque is newly recorded, inspired by sounds of gamelan orchestras. The rest of the new sound discs are based on vintage Optigan recording master tapes.
Details are available at the Optigan.com site.
When you turn the discs upside-down, they do a bizarre backwards-suck thing that can be hilarious. I believe the Orchestron did the same thing. I prefer the M-Tron Pro bank of Optigan sounds to the Sears knockoff I had as a kid. If you thought floppy drives could be a hassle…. Some kids do the drugs; others collect odd sounds that scare the family. If you play one of those cha-cha disks late at night, people will get out of bed to glare at you.
How much of a market is there for this? How many working Optigans are still around?
What’s next? New Mellotron tapes? Of course, that would have more of a market.
Multiple friends of mine have them and still use them. One has FIVE of them. The cult of the Optigan is still going strong.
I miss mine (gave it away in during a minimalist attack).
Man, I am still pumping to the Polynesian disc! When do they come to iOS?
GAMELESQUE is freaking me out… who would DO that???? On an Optigan??
That drum beat at the start of Country Folk sounds like some right proper sp1200 hip hop. I would love to sample that.