“You could pick up Casios, old Yamahas, cheap toy things for between $30 and $100. There’ll be something in there”: Mark Pritchard on why using cheap synths can spur creativity

Over the last 30 years of making music, Mark Pritchard has acquired a wide array of synths, including an Arp Odyssey and a Mini Moog. But when he was making Tall Tales, his collaborative album with Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke and revered visual artist Jonathan Zawada, he produced with machines far beyond what he had in his collection.

On the one hand, when Pritchard wanted to venture into the esoteric realm, he visited MESS, Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio, which houses incredibly rare and expensive synthesizers. Members of MESS can pay a fee to try them out in allotted sessions. While he was there, Pritchard got his hands on the Korg PS 3100, Roland CR-78 drum machine, and a Triadex Muse among others.

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“You get a chance to play on these synthesizers that are really hard to keep working, let alone afford,” Pritchard says in a new interview with MusicTech.

However, despite Pritchard’s skill, he also went the other direction, using some of the cheapest synths available to contribute sounds to the album.

“You could pick up Casios, old Yamahas, cheap toy things for between $30 and $100. There’ll be something in there. There’ll be a sound. There’ll be a source,” Pritchard says. “It’s good to limit yourself to something [and think] ‘I’m going to make something out of this today’. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but it’s fun to try things out.”

It took Pritchard, Yorke, and Zawada several years to complete Tall Tales. They started it during the pandemic, and it was released on May 9, 2025. Throughout that time, all three members had immense freedom to create as they pleased. They were never once in the room together, and they built collaborative ideas by adding new bits to a Miro board as they worked. So, no one was questioning what kind of machines Pritchard used. As long as they liked how it sounded, they were happy.

Read the full interview via MusicTech. Listen to Tall Tales below:

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