Optigan
At least one TV commercial from the era is extant, featuring the Optigan demonstrated by actor Carl Betz[3] (best known for his role as the father on The Donna Reed Show).
Non-reverb equipped Optigans feature a metal plate which reads "Stereophonic" in raised relief and which hides the unused opening.
The Optigan's playback system functioned much like the storage and reading of an optical soundtrack as was used in motion pictures, using a light bulb to energize a row of photodiodes on the opposite side of spinning, 12" diameter clear plastic film discs (officially referred to as "Program Discs") encoded with fifty-seven concentric optical tracks.
Program discs were loaded by simply sliding them onto the felt-covered platform; a V-shaped notch on the front of the panel aided in alignment.
There was also an optical metronome incorporated into the discs which showed as a red flashing light for the downbeat and white for the upbeats inside the Optigan badge above the keyboard.
", which was a rhythm and blues disc and "Hear and Now", with a sound clearly based on the hit single "Sweet Seasons" by Carole King (and cover art evocative of that of her Tapestry (1971) album).
Even though the technology of the day was more than sophisticated enough to avoid them, there were numerous mechanical problems with the disc's motor drive due to its having been engineered to be as affordable as possible.
One common example involves the F at the upper end of the keyboard: press this key, step on the volume control pedal, and the C-diminished/A-diminished chord can often be heard in the background.
In a very unusual move, A-major utilizes the same soundtrack as B-flat-diminished, G-diminished, and E-diminished, while E-major shares space with F-diminished and D-diminished, thereby making it impossible to play in the keys of A or E, at least with left-hand accompaniment.
Among them: Trace, I Dont Know How But They Found Me, Steve Hackett, Third Eye Blind, The Clash, Elvis Costello, Jon Brion, Driefzand, NL, in single "Zunlicht", Blur, Marco Benevento, Fiona Apple, Crash Test Dummies, Kraftwerk (Orchestron), Coil, Money Mark, Ani DiFranco, Michael Penn, Steve Fisk, Tom Waits, Marilyn Manson, Nan Vernon, Hala Strana, TISM, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, The Real Tuesday Weld, King Princess, Them Crooked Vultures, C418, Unwound, Sparklehorse and Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo—who mixed in parts of the "Banjo Sing-Along" disc on a later remix of Devo's 1981 single, "Beautiful World".
Alan also made extensive use of the "breakbeats" and the samples of the Hammond B3 organ that were part of the backing tracks found on many of the soul and R&B oriented Optigan discs.
Hackett's 1980 album, Defector, features an unusual number called "Sentimental Institution", recorded with a solo Optigan spinning the "Big Band Beat" disc behind singer Peter Hicks' vocals.
On his Live Archive: 70s (2001), featuring a performance from 1979, he plays a surrealistically silly interlude on the instrument (introducing it as "the most tasteless thing I could possibly do").
His 2003 release, To Watch the Storms, features sonically expanded samples of the Opsonar "Champagne Music" disc on the track, "Circus of Becoming".
Film director and sound designer David Lynch sampled "Big Band Beat" as part of his soundscape The Air is On Fire, produced as ambience for a 2007 art exhibition.
He then reused the song, redubbed "Slow 30s Room", in the eighth episode of television series Twin Peaks' third season, broadcast in June 2017.
