[This post was originally published on August 4th, 2008]

These days, there’s no distinguishing one keyboard from the next because all they really do is act as computer trigger devices. But in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and even the early 90s, keyboards and their manufacturers were known for signature sounds. Here are five of my favorites:

1. The Mellotron

Though not nearly as famous as the others on this little list, the Mellotron is perhaps the coolest keyboard ever invented. Like our modern-day keyboard controllers that trigger computer samples, the Mellotron was really nothing more than a sample trigger-er, too. But because it was invented in the early 60s, the samples were actual tape loops! By depressing a key, a keyboardist was putting a tape of, say, a choir, or a violin section into motion on that particular pitch. So each of the 35 keys had its own, distinct, 8-second tape loop ready to play in the belly of the keyboard. Mellotrons never really caught on, though, because they were a) always breaking down, and b) the tapes, just like cassette tapes, lost their edge over time. Imagine playing an 8-second cassette tape over and over in a loop for hours on end. Think about how quickly scratches and hiss would take over.

But it was and still is one of the most musical of all early keyboards. Its sound is unmistakable, heard here on the two very famous excerpts below.

“Strawberry Fields Forever” by the Beatles. (The opening flute quartet is classic Mellotron at its best.)

“Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues. (Those lush strings aren’t real! Well, technically they are, but as sampled and played back on the Mellotron.)

Be sure to check out “And You and I” by Yes, as well as “The Rain Song” by Led Zeppelin for more great Mellotron.

2. The Hammond Organ

Originally intended for churches, the Hammond line of organs, invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by his Hammond Organ Company, became very popular in the 60s and 70s with rock and blues bands, especially the Hammond B3, pictured here. Whether you know the Hammond or not, you definitely know its legendary sound. Check out the examples I’ve picked here and revel in that “a-ha moment.”

“Amsterdam,” by Coldplay – One of my favorite songs by Coldplay. Listen how the Hammond coming in under the piano just opens the whole song up and takes it to another level.

Ah, yes: “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum. Can you imagine how different the song would feel if the chord progression and tune were plucked out on, say, a piano?

The Hammond completely defines this great Steve Winwood song, “Gimme Some Lovin”:

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I’ve used Shazam on and off over the years to I.D. songs I either forgot the names of or just never knew. But the real test of any music recognition software is whether or not it can tell me what’s playing on a classical music station. This is where you really need the app to come through because, let’s face it, it could be 30 minutes or more before the piece ends and the radio announcer comes back on to tell you. Sadly, every time I’ve tried, the app has come up empty. I’ve even tested it with well-known pieces, like Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Instead of coming back with at least “The theme from Platoon,” Shazam says the piece is “unrecognized.” What would Samuel Barber say?

Deciphering classical music presents a lot of challenges. For starters, recordings are indistinguishable when you’re talking about a 12-second sample size. For example, there are more than 200 recordings of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony! Not quite like learning the beat of a B52s song, is it?

Tempi vary wildly from recording to recording and, as I understand it, it’s the tempo/beat mapping that Shazam is really working off of. But technology will improve, rest assured. The Shazams of the future will surely be able to not only distinguish between Mozart’s Requiem and Berlioz’s Requiem, but the hundreds of recordings of each. Until then, well, I guess the beat goes on…

Have any funny or interesting experiences with music recognition software? Let us know in the comments below.

Check out all the ON MUSIC posts here.

As a hard-core band-geek — Marching Band, Orchestra, Jazz Band, Pit Band — pretty much whatever band they had going at high school, I know what unusual musical arrangements sound like. I even made a few of my own back in the day. These, however, take unusual to another level entirely. Some were chosen based on the juxtapostion of songs in a medley, others just by the choice of song. I’ve also included some that weren’t necessarily the worst choices, but were played so poorly, they had to be published in a larger venue for more people to hear.

1. Dark Side of the… Rainbow?

Original song: Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Performed by: Judy Garland
Release date: September 1939

Original song: Time, Breathe, On the Run, Money
Performed by: Pink Floyd
Release date: March 10, 1973

Marching Band: University of Central Oklahoma
Hometown: Edmond, Oklahoma

2. Hey ya…Devil?

Original song: Hey Ya!
Performed by: OutKast
Release Date: September 9, 2003

Original song: The Devil Went Down to Georgia
Performed by: Charlie Daniels Band
Release Date: June 23, 1979

Marching Band: Garnet Valley High School
Hometown: Glen Mills, Pennsylvania

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“A long, long time ago…I can still remember how that music used to make me smile.” So begins Don McLean’s “American Pie,” a 1972 song about the death of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, J.P. Richardson (“The Big Bopper”), and pilot Roger Peterson in a tragic plane crash. If you don’t know the full story, check out Miss Cellania’s excellent post about the day the music died. Below, check out McLean’s song, and some performances by the artists who died fifty-one years ago today.

“American Pie” – Don McLean

“Do you believe in rock ‘n roll? Can music save your mortal soul, and can you teach me how to dance real slow?”

“Peggy Sue” – Buddy Holly & The Crickets

They’re rock and roll specialists.

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Today is 09/09/09, and you know what that means!

The big Beatles: Rock Band release. (GET IT? Number 9, number 9, number 9…) To get you in the mood, here are 9 rather obscure facts about those four lads from Liverpool that we bet you don’t know. (Nein?)

1. Before Lennon/McCartney there was McCartney/Lennon

If you pick up a Beatles album today, you’ll notice the songs are credited to Lennon-McCartney, in alphabetical order, thanks to a longstanding agreement between the two songwriters whereby each would get full credit no matter who came up with the tune or lyric first. But this alphabetical listing was not always the case. The credits on their first album, Please Please Me, list the eight original compositions to McCartney-Lennon. One reason for this could be that Paul McCartney wrote “P.S. I Love You” and “Love Me Do,” the first two songs on the album. The McCartney-Lennon credit would appear twice more on McCartney’s 1976 live album, Wings Over America, and once again on 2002’s Back in the U.S., albeit much to Yoko Ono’s disapproval.

2. The Ed Sullivan Show was not The Beatles’ American TV debut

For that matter, CBS can’t really claim bragging rights, NBC can. Yes, it’s true: NBC scooped CBS, as The Beatles made their American television debut on NBC’s evening news show, The Huntley-Brinkley Report, not The Ed Sullivan Show, nor Walter Cronkite’s evening news. Although virtually unknown in America at the time, the band was causing mass hysteria in England and all three U.S. television networks sent camera crews to film their November 16, 1963, concert in Bournemouth. NBC used the footage in a four-minute segment on November 18th, but CBS waited until November 22nd to air the story during its morning newscast with Mike Wallace. The network planned to air the story on its evening newscast as well, but just hours after the Beatles story was broadcast, Walter Cronkite broke the news that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. On December 10th, Cronkite aired the Beatles segment during prime-time, which set into motion the Beatlemania that culminated with their February 1964 performances on The Ed Sullivan Show.

3. Eric Clapton almost replaced George

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Long before I ever knew what a mondegreen was, I used to think the lyrics of David Bowie’s “Suffragette City” went like this:
Hey man, oh leave me alone, you know
Hey man, oh Henry, get off the phone, I gotta
Hey man, I gotta straighten my face
This malaprop chick’s just put my spine out of place

Of course, now I know the original malaprop chick is actually a “mellow-thighed chick,” and my head hangs low in shame. But we all do it, right? We all make up lyrics (even words!) when we don’t know what the artist is actually singing.

A misheard, or made-up lyric, is called a mondegreen, after Lady Mondegreen.

So who is Lady Mondegreen? Well, she’s a misheard lyric herself from an ancient Scottish ballad called “The Bonny Earl of Murray.” The last two lines of the original lyric go like this:

They have slain the Earl of Murray,
And they layd him on the green.

The American writer, Sylvia Wright, is the one who misheard the lyric when she was a child and wrote about it years later, coining the word mondegreen for this first time in a Harper’s Magazine essay published in 1954.

So okay, “Lady Mondegreen.” Not so funny, but the ballad is over 300 years old. Much funnier, perhaps, is the mondegreen used in the TV show, Friends, when Phoebe mishears the words of a certain Elton John song and sings, “Hold me closer Tony Danza.”

What about you? We’d love to know what some of your favorite misheard lyrics are.

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[It is with sadness that we report Les Paul's death today, at the age of 94. I had the pleasure of meeting Les a couple times when I was playing guitar with Pat Martino. Pat and Les were good friends, and the three of us had drinks once when Les had his standing gig at a small, now defunct jazz club across the street from Lincoln Center. That night, I asked Les if he really loved the guitar named after him, and he said dryly, "It pays the rent."In honor of Les, I thought we'd rerun this post, which, curiously, went up earlier this week. Goodbye Les, we'll all miss your music making...]

Each guitar on this list helped define either a genre, a sound, or in some cases, a career. Think of it as an introduction to some of the most popular guitars in the world. For the companion post on 5 Legendary Keyboards, click here.

1. Gibson Les Paul

Design: In the early ‘50s, Gibson president Ted McCarty approached jazz phenomenon Les Paul and asked if the guitarist would lend his name to a new guitar, then in design stages. Paul agreed, and also lent some minor advice along the lines of color schemes. In 1952, one of the world’s most famous guitars of all-time was unveiled. Except for a period of time in the mid ‘60s, it’s been in production ever since.

Les Paul with his LesPaul

Look/Feel/Sound: The signature sound of the Les Paul is warm and full, with lots of sustain. In fact, the instrument’s sustain is so well known, it was used as a joke in This Is Spinal Tap. Nigel Tufnel is showing mockumentarian Marty DiBergi his guitar collection and holds up a Les Paul Standard, showing off the sustain without actually playing a note. While there are many different models and styles, with slightly different pickup configurations and cut-aways, all Les Paul’s, like all Gibson’s in general, feature top-mounted strings, rather than through the guitar body, as seen in competitor Fender’s designs.

Guitarists who helped make it a legend: Les Paul, of course, but just about every important guitarist over the last half century has recorded with one. The most famous devotee is probably Jimmy Page, who, when he wasn’t playing his trusty double neck, was generally armed with one. Coupled with his Marshall stack amplifiers and sometimes a cello bow, Page was able to pull even more sustain out of the instrument.

Hear it in action:

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Some of you may recall my post last year about original recordings that were better than their covers. Well now it’s time to honor some covers that, at least by my way of thinking, rank right up there with the originals. Unfortunately, the floss is no longer allowed to include soundbites, so you’ll have to go check these out on iTunes, or hit the YouTube vids provided. Of course, these are just some of my favorites. I’m sure you all have your own, and we’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

1. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

originally written and recorded by The Rolling Stones, released as a single in 1965.

This tune has been covered by Britney Spears, Jimi Hendrix, Cat Power and Vanilla Ice, but the one I think beats out the original is by Devo and was produced by Brian Eno and released on their 1978 debut album Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (They had actually released an earlier single of the cover, but the reworked version is better.) And by the way, if you’re a Devo fan (and who isn’t?) and haven’t heard yet, the band is back! Check out their latest video over on their Web site.

2. “Unchained Melody”

originally written for the 1955 film, Unchained, with music by Alex North and lyrics by Hy Zaret.

Todd Duncan was the first to record this classic, one of the most often covered songs penned in the last 100 years, with more than 500 versions in hundreds of languages. Les Baxter, Al Hibbler, Jimmy Young and Roy Hamilton all released versions in the next decade that topped the charts, but my favorite is the Phil Spector version, sung by the Righteous Brothers, released as a single in 1965.

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Four-tracks have been getting smaller every decade. When I was a kid, in the 80s, I had one. A Tascam 244 (pictured 2nd in list) to be exact, that recorded four tracks of audio to a standard cassette tape. It was the size of a suitcase, and about as rugged as one, too. Remember those Tourister commercials with the gorilla? Exactly.

(from left: Teac reel-to-reel ca. '70s, Tascam cassette tape ca. '80s, Boss digital ca. 2000, iPhone 4-track app 2009)

But of course four tracks weren’t enough for an ambitious songwriter. So I’d ping pong tracks, but not in mono. Ohhhh, no. Mono was for amateurs. I’d do four drum tracks and dump them down to a standard cassette deck. Then I’d copy those two stereo tracks onto two new tracks, on a new tape, on the four-track and add two more, and then repeat.

True, there was serious generation loss each time, but the mounting tape hiss was a fair trade off for eight or even ten tracks in stereo.
Today, kids growing up don’t have to worry so much about tape hiss. And suitcase-sized 4-tracks have been replaced by iPhones.

Wait, hold on, rewind. Did he say iPhones???

Don’t believe me? Check out the making of The 88’s recent single “Love Is The Thing.”

Check out past On Music posts here.

There’s something cool about musicians quoting themselves. While there are many more than three examples, these are just some of my favorites. How about you? Let’s get a long list going so someone can write a book about the subject. Give us the lyric and the two songs. (Try not to include concept album lyrics, like The Wall, or something, where songs come back throughout the album in different permutations.)

1a. “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by the Police

Released on the 1981 album, Ghost in the Machine, this top-10 hit features the following lyric: Do I have to tell the story/
Of a thousand rainy days/
Since we first met?/
It’s a big enough umbrella/
But it’s always me that ends up getting wet

1b. “O My God” by the Police

Following up in 1983 with one of their best-selling albums, Synchronicity, Sting used the same exact lyric toward the end of the song “O My God.” (He’d go on to use it AGAIN on his solo album Ten Summoner’s Tales in the track “Seven Days.”)

2a. “Sexx Laws” by Beck

Put out in late 1999, as Y2K fears ridiculously gripped the world, Midnight Vultures contains two songs with the same lyric. Here it is first, in its most famous incarnation, off the first song on the album: I’m a full-grown man/But I’m not afraid to cry

2b. “Debra” by Beck

A totally different type of tune altogether, “Debra” is the final song on the album and contains every word in the above referenced lyric, hold the last (“cry”).
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