There are a number of keyboards that define prog rock.  And of course amongst their number are the giants: The Hammond B3/C3, the Minimoog, the almost mythical Yamaha GX1 and the Mellotron.  Now, I have to confess a kind of love-hate relationship with the mellotron, I can’t deny the impact it had on music in general, and the prog rock genre in particular.  It’s use by Tony Banks on those Gabriel era Genesis songs such as Watcher of the Skies and by Rick Wakeman on the Fragile and Close to the Edge albums, these sounds defined my musical upbringing.  More often than not the Mellotron was associated with those somewhat plaintive string sounds (Think: The Moody Blues Knights in White Satin) But Mellotrons were capable of flute sounds, brass, and choir sounds)

But on the flip-side to this, I always thought that it’s very nature was it’s weakness.  An electromechanical keyboard that worked by dragging lengths of tape across multiple tape heads each containing a recording of an instrument, or ensemble playing a note, in effect the first sample replay device. You could only play 8 second notes, because then the tape ran out. If you played a big chord the pitch dropped due to all the friction, and they were prone to tape flutter, breaking down or even on the odd occasion, catching fire!

The tape frames wore out and consequently the sound became more muffled with time, and Messers Wakeman, and Banks have written or spoken about their dreadful Mellotron experiences. (The story goes that Rick once took one out, poured petrol over it and ceremoniously set fire to it!) And while you can’t deny the melancholic slightly fluttery, slightly detuned sounds that define many early prog tracks, I was always more drawn to the shimmering, albeit more artifical sound of devices like the Eminent String synth and its ilk. OK, prog purists, please don’t hate me!

Despite all that, I decided that Home by the Sea was the sort of song that lent itself to that old school sound. I decided that in the 6/8 synth solo I could just imagine someone like Tony Banks playing a string part with his left hand, on a keyboard behind him while he noodled out the solo part. Who am I to deny my imagination?

So although I’m not Tony Banks and I don’t have a Mellotron, I decided to add the part anyway.  My Alesis Fusion 8HD is, I suspect the most underrated keyboard in the world.  It contains a rather amazing powerful sampler and is capable of some incredible sounds.  One of the sound design companies that worked on this keyboard on behalf of Alesis was  Hollow Sun and Steve Howell from HS provided his NewTron Bomb samples for the Fusion.  This is about as authentic as you can get, samples directly from an original with nothing added or taken away other than being seamlessly looped so they play for more than 8 seconds.  I decided on the rather excellently named Tape Watcher program (Apparently for the intro for Watcher of the Skies, Tony Banks set switch on his tron to somewhere between the Strings and Brass settings, which made the machine play a bit of each tape)

And so despite my ambivalence towards the venerable ‘Tron’ it is nonetheless going to find its way onto the album after all.