Meet the Crudman: A modernish take on the Mellotron, invented, but of course, in Brooklyn. It’s a series of hacked cassette players, loaded with tapes that can contain single, droning tones, spoken words, or whatever other samples you heart desires. The players have been re-engineered with an Arduino-based Teensy microcontroller that responds to MIDI signals from a keyboard. Simply press a key, and the tape motor speeds up or slows down to generate a musical note.