Blog | Music Tips, Features & Tutorials

Hardware Heroes: The Music Master

This weeks blog explore the next chapter of Hardware Heroes...

The Chamberlin Music Master was the world’s first basic production tape replay keyboard; created by American Inventor Harry Chamberlin in the late 1940s, this prototype of an impending legacy in sound was not without its faults. Its unreliable electronics were hot-wired, usually delivering a sizeable shock when tampered with!

The Music Master was originally aimed at families, as an accompaniment unit for sitting room sing-alongs and Chamberlin had never considered the endorsement it would earn from house bands and lounge acts across the States, who favoured it for its easy replication of their missing accompaniments. Chamberlin never anticipated the legacy that his invention would bring to the world of music production and was known to detest the rock n roll music that would emerge throughout the 50s.

The Music Master operated on a basic tape mechanism beneath each key which, when pressed, would release the tape across a rolling capstan, relaying the sound through internal speakers. Each key would play for around 8 seconds before the sound stopped and tape coiled back into position. The sounds featured on the Music Master, from instruments to special effects, were all recorded in Chamberlin’s own home on Neumann U 47 microphones. The Music Master generated great concern within the American Federation of Musicians, who saw the innovative Music Master as a threat to the livelihood of working musicians.

Through various progressions the Music Master remained unreliable, until the early-60s when an updated, more dependable version emerged from the UK market and began to overshadow the Chamberlin. It wasn’t until the mid-60s that Chamberlin discovered this new version was heavily based on his own invention, two of which had been shipped to the UK by Chamberlin’s own salesman (and originally his window cleaner!) Bill Franson. Franson’s illegitimate venture spawned one of the most influential tape replay keyboards in history: The Mellotron.

« Back to Blog