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Old 6th Nov 2019, 9:13 pm   #21
Gulliver
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Default Re: Mellotron!

Tony Banks of Genesis is said to have bought the mellotron from Robert Fripp which was used on "In The Court Of The Crimson King"...and that it is that very instrument we hear on Watcher Of The Skies. Although he'd rented one for Trespass (1970) it was Steve Hackett who persuaded Banks to purchase one for Nursery Cryme (1971)...Hackett being a Crimson fan.

When Genesis had their first concerts in the USA there was terrible trouble getting their Mellotron to work properly, made worse by the relatively crude equipment they were using to convert 120V to 240V. I think both Collins and Banks have stated that on their first US tour the Mellotron never really worked properly with Banks and the stage technician constantly adjusting it.

There's some hilarious footage of Rick Wakeman playing "the new Mellotron Sound" during recording sessions for Going For The One in 1977. Of course it was Wakeman who played on Bowie's Space Oddity, being considered the only keyboard player who knew how to keep the thing in tune.

I love how it sounds so eerie....despite being recordings of actual instruments and voices it sounds unreal - and I mean that as a compliment. It has character of it's own also imbued by the 7 second tape length and rewind time....no note can last longer than 7 seconds and generally cannot be repeated rapidly. It leads to interesting chord structures (see Watcher) and playing techniques. And sounds glorious in it's own way.
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Old 6th Nov 2019, 10:05 pm   #22
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Default Re: Mellotron!

I remember hearing a program on prog-rock in the 80s where the Mellotron was discussed - apparently if you played some chords involving a large number of 'notes' at the same time, the total load on the drive-motor became enough that all the notes played slightly slow-and-wobbly!
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Old 6th Nov 2019, 10:34 pm   #23
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Default Re: Mellotron!

The first electronic keyboard instrument I was ever asked to repair was a Mellotron. The tapes had become mis-aligned and I spent an age getting it all working again.
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Old 6th Nov 2019, 10:52 pm   #24
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and adding to this there was the Orchestron and other derivatives of the film sound track style optical disc systems Mattel invented with the Optigan. Notably used by Kraftwerk for their string and choir sounds, of which the choir on Uranium was later sampled into the Emulator for Blue Monday. Also interesting is that the foremost Orchestron expert who has a lot of the master tapes reckons that the Orchestron choir is probably nicked from the Mellotron.
The only real advantage it had over the 'tron was that there was no 8? second time limit although plus supposedly the optical playback system was more robust, with sounds on plastic optical disks, the disadvantage, of course, was that sounds that relied on a specific envelope as the sound progressed could not be sampled very well unlike on the 'tron. It was also very Lo-Fi and did not sound as good as the 'tron.

As for the 8 track based system that was the Birotron, I believe rick wakeman put some money into it and it had an envelope generator designed by Bob Moog. I believe wakeman got annoyed with his and set it on fire!

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Old 7th Nov 2019, 8:29 am   #25
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Default Re: Mellotron!

There was also the 'Chamberlin', the earliest tape-organ from which the Mellotron was derived. There is an interesting tale of the Chamberlin salesman going rogue, running away with one and setting up abroad in opposition.

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Old 7th Nov 2019, 9:05 am   #26
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Default Re: Mellotron!

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Originally Posted by Hartley118 View Post
I do remember that the first TV show to be dubbed using NECAM D was ‘Blakes 7’- remember that? I particularly admired the patience and stamina of dubbing engineer Malcolm Johnson, who not only had to learn the new system, but cope with various bugs and crashes. NECAM at that time was based on a minicomputer with a pair of 8-inch floppy disc drives storing the real-time data, so the potential for errors was quite exciting!

Martin
I remember Blake's 7 very well; it was one of my favourites when I was 13.

One of Neve's competitors, Solid State Logic were still using Computer Automation Naked Mini computers to automate their VCA based mixing consoles when I left there in '89. There were a couple of aborted attempts to update the "studio computer" to something more modern and capable around my time there.
All software for the Naked Mini based studio computer was written in assembler and the person who maintained it was a very capable but rather irascible engineer who sported the beard and cardigan look. He was of the opinion that high level programming languages would never catch on even though many SSL projects had been using C, C++ and Pascal for several years by that time.

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Old 7th Nov 2019, 10:20 am   #27
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There was also the 'Chamberlin', the earliest tape-organ from which the Mellotron was derived. There is an interesting tale of the Chamberlin salesman going rogue, running away with one and setting up abroad in opposition.

David
Yes, supposedly the bloke came over to Britain to look for someone who could make tape heads for them, being a quite specialized use as they all had to be pretty identical to one another, plus combine that with the amount of heads required you realise why finding a suitable manufacturer was quite difficult.

Here is a Wikipedia except on what supposedly happened,

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wikipedia
The concept of the Mellotron originated when Chamberlin's sales agent, Bill Fransen, brought two of Chamberlin's Musicmaster 600 instruments to England in 1962 to search for someone who could manufacture 70 matching tape heads for future Chamberlins. He met Frank, Norman and Les Bradley of tape engineering company Bradmatic Ltd, who said they could improve on the original design.

Fransen failed to explain to the Bradleys that he was not the owner of the concept, and Chamberlin was unhappy with the fact that someone overseas was copying his idea. After some acrimony between the two parties, a deal was struck between them in 1966, whereby they would both continue to manufacture instruments independently.
As an extra bit Rick Wakeman is supposedly one of the very few people who can keep a mellotron in tune whilst playing, having adopted a special playing technique.
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Old 7th Nov 2019, 12:28 pm   #28
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I think David Nixon had something to do with designing it - lovely man.

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Old 7th Nov 2019, 2:27 pm   #29
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Default Re: Mellotron!

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Originally Posted by Gulliver View Post
Tony Banks of Genesis is said to have bought the mellotron from Robert Fripp which was used on "In The Court Of The Crimson King"...and that it is that very instrument we hear on Watcher Of The Skies. Although he'd rented one for Trespass (1970) it was Steve Hackett who persuaded Banks to purchase one for Nursery Cryme (1971)...Hackett being a Crimson fan.

When Genesis had their first concerts in the USA there was terrible trouble getting their Mellotron to work properly, made worse by the relatively crude equipment they were using to convert 120V to 240V. I think both Collins and Banks have stated that on their first US tour the Mellotron never really worked properly with Banks and the stage technician constantly adjusting it.

There's some hilarious footage of Rick Wakeman playing "the new Mellotron Sound" during recording sessions for Going For The One in 1977. Of course it was Wakeman who played on Bowie's Space Oddity, being considered the only keyboard player who knew how to keep the thing in tune.

I love how it sounds so eerie....despite being recordings of actual instruments and voices it sounds unreal - and I mean that as a compliment. It has character of it's own also imbued by the 7 second tape length and rewind time....no note can last longer than 7 seconds and generally cannot be repeated rapidly. It leads to interesting chord structures (see Watcher) and playing techniques. And sounds glorious in it's own way.
Funnily enough, this came up in conversation recently with my old mate Pete who comes up from Southend to see me every now and then. Knowing that I'd been re-reading my Mellotron book, he asked why the instrument always sounded so strange and eerie, especially the choral and string sounds.
I didn't know, and the Mellotron book doesn't mention it, but I guessed that perhaps it was a product of the studio recording process at the time, the Mellotron playing via its own amplifier and speakers and being miked-up into the mixing desk. Each step in the chain introducing filtering effects. Dunno, but you are quite right about the weird sound.
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Old 7th Nov 2019, 2:46 pm   #30
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Default Re: Mellotron!

I don’t know about the miking up or otherwise for musical applications of the Mellotron, but ISTR that the BBC sound effects version was directly connected to a desk input.

Martin
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Old 8th Nov 2019, 1:43 pm   #31
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Hi Chris,

Colin Crawford [the Cheltenham-based piano tuner and member of Sundae Club] has one ..... apparently it's not a good idea to hold the keys down for too long. Also .... one can [apparently] change the various tapes in order to achieve different notes etc.

I suspect that they require regular and very frequent maintenance .....
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Old 8th Nov 2019, 2:16 pm   #32
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I thought one of the best tunes using the Mellotron was Nights In White Satin by the Moody Blues. In fact the Moodys made great use of the Mellotron on all of their albums from 1967 to 1972. I think it's a great sounding instrument.

Haunting in the background to this famous song.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdykXAT19Go
I read somewhere that one of the Moody Blues worked for the the company that made the Mellotron, which was useful because their's often broke down when using it, as he normally knew how to fix it.
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Old 8th Nov 2019, 3:38 pm   #33
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Default Re: Mellotron!

Probably the best in yer face mellotron was throughout King Crimson's 'In the Court of the Crimson King'. The most famous was the intro to the Beatles' Strawberry Fields.

The tape sets were intended to be 'easily' swapped so they could be set up with other sounds. This seems to be a new meaning of 'easily'

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Old 8th Nov 2019, 6:42 pm   #34
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Default Re: Mellotron!

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Originally Posted by Gulliver View Post
I love how it sounds so eerie....despite being recordings of actual instruments and voices it sounds unreal - and I mean that as a compliment. It has character of it's own also imbued by the 7 second tape length and rewind time....no note can last longer than 7 seconds and generally cannot be repeated rapidly. It leads to interesting chord structures (see Watcher) and playing techniques. And sounds glorious in it's own way.
I think that the unique sound is due in part to the mechanism introducing its own speed variations in the reproduced sound i.e. wow and flutter becoming slow and fast vibrato. Also, I believe that all of the playback heads are in series with the output of this chain being fed to a single amplifier. All of those series tape heads would form their own complex combinations of LC filters, the relative phase of notes played together would be unknown and there would be no resemblance of a match to any known tape playback EQ curve.

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Old 8th Nov 2019, 7:08 pm   #35
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Default Re: Mellotron!

I'm sure the 240V ones worked really well on 60Hz.
Transpose down by 4 semis -ish.

I really can't get used to mains hum in the key of B when it should be in G. It's better I stay at home.

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Old 8th Nov 2019, 7:29 pm   #36
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Default Re: Mellotron!

Though in no way a musician, if I was musically-inclined I would have found the well-documented foibles - in particular the inconsistence, unpredictability and non-reproducibility - of the Mellotron deeply frustrating.

[Wrestling to tie down the vagaries of the instrument rather than focussing on the purity of the performance?]

Perhaps that's why I generally find 'live' performances/recordings to be less-satisfying than their studio-equivalents? And also why everyone switched to digital synthesis/stored-program-content as soon as it became available/affordable?
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Old 8th Nov 2019, 8:19 pm   #37
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Fair assessment. From the start, Mellotrons were always known to be a problematic, frustrating stage instrument that needed constant attention and nursing to work even remotely 'properly'. In the studio, a different thing. I love the sounds they make.
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Old 8th Nov 2019, 9:18 pm   #38
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I read this thread and remembered a DIY version I'd seen years ago. A quick search yeilded this link...

http://www.mysterycircuits.com/melloman/olmelloman.html

Really clever


Cheers,

Andy.
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Old 9th Nov 2019, 12:17 pm   #39
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Oh wow. I've just spent half an hour chuckling at his ingenuity and general barminess. I always think that while there are people in this world who take the time to do off-the-wall stuff like this, there may be hope for us yet.
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Old 9th Nov 2019, 8:41 pm   #40
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That is quite a project - was it sponsored by Sony? How many walkmans?
Lots of fun all the same.

As for the 'Engineers Dream' Mellotron where everything is perfect compared with the actual one, that's just how real world musical instruments behave. I think that music is in the arts not the sciences because of all those so called deficiencies.
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