Seth Vanek doesn't like to do things the easy way. He is a musician in a band called Roommate, part of Milquetoast Sounds and also Milquetoast engineer Gerard Barretto's roommate. Now that you might be thoroughly confused, here's a better example.

Roommate wanted a sound that resembled a Mellotron on their latest release. They did not have a Mellotron. They could've easily found a sample, but easily isn't Milquetoast's style. Instead, Seth recorded several chorded pitches from a baritone recorder onto a tape machine for its natural warmth and used the pitch bend on the machine as an actual instrument to record from the cassette multitrack into Pro Tools.

It'd probably be easier to watch the video.