Tape replay keyboard

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A tape replay keyboard is a musical instrument that uses pre-recorded analog tapes to produce sound when a key is pressed. Examples of tape replay keyboards include the Chamberlin, the Mellotron, and the Birotron.

Today samplers are used to play back musical sounds from computer memory instead of analog tape.

Tape replay keyboards were invented in the late 1940s and were in use in the music world from the mid 1960s through the late 1970s, the most popular being the Mellotron. With the creation of more powerful and cheaper music synthesizers and samplers, tape replay keyboards became largely obsolete, although some are still in use today and are even being produced new.