Chords for Tony Banks BBC Rock School Appearances

[Gb] You can actually get the things to hang over [B] between the things, which is the other thing.
[Ab] _Mellotron,
which used [A] tape samples of strings and quads _ _ _
_ [Dm] and yes.
_ _ _ [C] _ [Dm] _
_ _ [A] _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ [Gm] _
_ [E] _ _ _ [Dm] _ _ [C] _ [Ab] _
_ [G] _ [F] _ _ [Bb] _ _ [C] Delightful, but the Mellotron [D] was [E] incredibly unreliable when it [Am] came to performing live.
[Dm]
Genesis keyboard player Tony Banks.
_ _ _ The Mellotron was a notorious instrument.
It was put together, the early one I had, which was also a great big thing.
I mean, they really did make it out of whatever they like, because they had their hands on it.
You used bicycle chains and vacuum cleaner motors, you know.
And they had these ridiculous large kind of drums with tape on them.
I mean, _ incredible technique of searching the tapes to find the right tone and everything, which they had.
And the whole system just went wrong all the time.
And we had to use it.
We got to the stage where we were rebuilding it every night,
because it was [N] structurally so unsound and it was real chaos.
_ The breakthrough came_
First and foremost, you know, I'm a songwriter and therefore I'm interested in writing compliments for my own songs
and for other people's songs, you know.
That's the main thing I do, really.
The idea of playing lead when I first came to the group was_
I never played lead, I mean, I wasn't really interested in that originally.
But then, obviously, once you get the keyboards and you hear sounds,
you start to have played melodies rather than sung melodies.
And I always look upon my, you know, whatever kind of solos, call them what you will,
more like kind of little instrumentals, if you like.
I tend to sort of write them as carefully as I'd write a vocal tune, and that's the melody.
And most of the time, you wouldn't improvise much from them.
[C] _ _
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_ [Dm] _ _ _ _ _ [C] Now _ _ [F] _ _ _ _ [C] _ _
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let's look at different ways [Dm] of improvising.
[N] With synthesizers around, this question of voices and voicings becomes even more involved.
Someone who's not afraid to experiment with big sounds and textures
is Genesis keyboard player Tony Banks.
I like that effect sometimes.
I think it works very well.
I mean, a prime example was, again, on the last album, Home by the Sea.
The guitar solo at the end is like, you know, I'm just playing_
I mean, I'm making an incredible noise, really, of sort of just_
There's this sound from this enclavia in it,
which is _
_ [E] going all the way [C] through a guitar solo.
I'm putting mics on the top of it, but I think it works.
_ [Am] _ _
[Em] _ _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ [Am] _
_ [Em] _ _ _ _ _ [C] _ _
[Am] _ _ [D] _ _ [Bm] You [C] _ _
_ _ [Em] _ get that effect, you know, and it just sounds great, I think, in the context.
You really can't distinguish anything apart from this guitar that sort of soars out the middle of it all.
And behind it, it's just like everything's going all hell's broken loose.
I mean, it's supposed to be a sort of ghost story, the song, you know.
So the idea was that everything was sort of coming at you.
_ A typical example from the early days was the section from Supper's Radio,
which we called Apocalypse in 9-8, for lack of a better title.
_ _ And, you know, that keeps just one guitar riff going all the way through, which was just [E] _ this_
_ _ Now, what was fun with that with me, it was the first time I really tried it,
was just trying any chords with that that sound _ good, you know.
You can either_
If you play an E major without it, _ _ _ _ [A] _ _
[B] _ _ _ [E] it's a very happy little thing.
But if you play [C] these chords, _ _ _ _ [D] _ _
it [E] has a more dramatic sort of feel, you know.
And you_
Which is how we did it, really, just sort of built it up.
So the_
Built up, in fact, with the dramatic chords and brought the vocals back in
when it got to the most dramatic chord in the thing.
And then it just_
The whole thing sort of took off, I think.
And it was the real peak of the song.
Very important sort of feature.
It's just quite fun how you can change the character,