Scrap
12-19-2003, 06:56 PM
This is a new concept that we will be taking for a spin. Every Friday, we will dig into the archives of synth-dom and pull out interesting pieces of historic gear, ancient recording techniques, or just plain old fun trivia. You may discuss freely. :)
Today's bit: the Mellotron.
http://www.rockprojekt.de/Keyboards/Images/mellotron.jpg
(Text sourced from http://www.pinkfloyd-co.com/band/interviews/art-rev/art-mellotron.html)
The Mellotron is based on a principal invented by Harry Chamberlin, where each key simply sets a length of tape in motion, playing back whatever was recorded on the tape. They were thus the predecessors of sample playback machines. User sampling wasn't impossible, either - but generally involved recording what you wanted and sending it to the Mellotron factory to be converted into a rack of tapes for your machine.
Early Mellotrons would have a bank of backing tracks and percussion tracks, like loops today, as well as multi-sampled lead/chordal instruments. You'd even get little bursts of applause or other ambience on some of the tapes - including Bill Fransen's 'Yeah!!' at the end of the Dixieland rhythmtrack.
The Mellotrons' big advantage over the synthesisers of the time was in their polyphony, and in the comparative fidelity of their sounds. Later on, they also managed to put up a good fight against early samplers, first by providing better fidelity, and then in the size of their 'memory' - you would have needed a huge amount of onboard memory to have sampled the equivalent amount of sounds on, say, a Mellotron Mark II, at a similar bandwidth. Okay, you couldn't re-trigger asound until the tape had rewound, but the seven or eight seconds the sound lasted for was a cut above the Emulator and Mirage - not to mention Akai's S700 and Roland's S10. Some people claim the possibility of making the sound of any one note a little brighter and louder by pressing down hard on the key - a sort of primitive polyphonic after-touch - but no less an authority than Les Bradley says that this would only have happened on an instrument that was so badly out of alignment that the overall signal-to -noise ratio would have been poor.
Short user list includes (actual model unknown):
Gregg Allman (briefly)
Ken Ascher (John Lennon: 'Mind Games')
Driscoll 'This Wheel's on Fire'
Tony Banks
Beach Boys
Beatles (Strawberry Fields Forever and throughout The White Album) - sold at Abbey Road sale in 1980
Cocteau Twins
David Cross/King Crimson ('Epitaph', etc.)
Electric Light Orchestra
Brian Eno ('From the Same Hill')
Bob Ezrin (Lou Reed: 'Berlin')
Larry Fast
Robert Fripp
Mitchell Froom
Genesis
Steve Hackett
Jimi Hendrix ('The Burning of the Midnight Lamp' - choir effects)
Simon House / Hawkwind
Billy Joel
Elton John ('Daniel' and 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds')
King Crimson ('Epitaph')
Lenny Kravitz ('Fields of Joy')
Led Zeppelin ('Stairway to Heaven' - flute sounds at beginning; strings on 'The Rain Song') (s/n 216)
Howard Leese/Heart
John Lennon - in private studio - probably
Julian Lennon
Patrick Leonard
Manfred Mann ('Ha-ha Said the Clown' and 'Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James')
Marillion
Meat Beat Manifesto
Moody Blues
Patrick Moraz
Graham Nash/Hollies (1967)
Mike Oldfield (the Strawberry Fields Machine, recently sold back to Paul McCartney, reportedly for £10000)
Oscar Peterson
Pink Floyd
Andy Richards
Eberhard Schoener
Rolling Stones ('2000 Light Years From Home')
Tomita
John Tout/Renaissance
Vangelis
Rick Wakeman (on 'Space Oddity')
Blue Weaver/Strawbs,
Wings
Stevie Winwood/Traffic 1967
Robert Wyatt ('Ruth is Stranger than Richard' and 'Rock Bottom')
Today's bit: the Mellotron.
http://www.rockprojekt.de/Keyboards/Images/mellotron.jpg
(Text sourced from http://www.pinkfloyd-co.com/band/interviews/art-rev/art-mellotron.html)
The Mellotron is based on a principal invented by Harry Chamberlin, where each key simply sets a length of tape in motion, playing back whatever was recorded on the tape. They were thus the predecessors of sample playback machines. User sampling wasn't impossible, either - but generally involved recording what you wanted and sending it to the Mellotron factory to be converted into a rack of tapes for your machine.
Early Mellotrons would have a bank of backing tracks and percussion tracks, like loops today, as well as multi-sampled lead/chordal instruments. You'd even get little bursts of applause or other ambience on some of the tapes - including Bill Fransen's 'Yeah!!' at the end of the Dixieland rhythmtrack.
The Mellotrons' big advantage over the synthesisers of the time was in their polyphony, and in the comparative fidelity of their sounds. Later on, they also managed to put up a good fight against early samplers, first by providing better fidelity, and then in the size of their 'memory' - you would have needed a huge amount of onboard memory to have sampled the equivalent amount of sounds on, say, a Mellotron Mark II, at a similar bandwidth. Okay, you couldn't re-trigger asound until the tape had rewound, but the seven or eight seconds the sound lasted for was a cut above the Emulator and Mirage - not to mention Akai's S700 and Roland's S10. Some people claim the possibility of making the sound of any one note a little brighter and louder by pressing down hard on the key - a sort of primitive polyphonic after-touch - but no less an authority than Les Bradley says that this would only have happened on an instrument that was so badly out of alignment that the overall signal-to -noise ratio would have been poor.
Short user list includes (actual model unknown):
Gregg Allman (briefly)
Ken Ascher (John Lennon: 'Mind Games')
Driscoll 'This Wheel's on Fire'
Tony Banks
Beach Boys
Beatles (Strawberry Fields Forever and throughout The White Album) - sold at Abbey Road sale in 1980
Cocteau Twins
David Cross/King Crimson ('Epitaph', etc.)
Electric Light Orchestra
Brian Eno ('From the Same Hill')
Bob Ezrin (Lou Reed: 'Berlin')
Larry Fast
Robert Fripp
Mitchell Froom
Genesis
Steve Hackett
Jimi Hendrix ('The Burning of the Midnight Lamp' - choir effects)
Simon House / Hawkwind
Billy Joel
Elton John ('Daniel' and 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds')
King Crimson ('Epitaph')
Lenny Kravitz ('Fields of Joy')
Led Zeppelin ('Stairway to Heaven' - flute sounds at beginning; strings on 'The Rain Song') (s/n 216)
Howard Leese/Heart
John Lennon - in private studio - probably
Julian Lennon
Patrick Leonard
Manfred Mann ('Ha-ha Said the Clown' and 'Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James')
Marillion
Meat Beat Manifesto
Moody Blues
Patrick Moraz
Graham Nash/Hollies (1967)
Mike Oldfield (the Strawberry Fields Machine, recently sold back to Paul McCartney, reportedly for £10000)
Oscar Peterson
Pink Floyd
Andy Richards
Eberhard Schoener
Rolling Stones ('2000 Light Years From Home')
Tomita
John Tout/Renaissance
Vangelis
Rick Wakeman (on 'Space Oddity')
Blue Weaver/Strawbs,
Wings
Stevie Winwood/Traffic 1967
Robert Wyatt ('Ruth is Stranger than Richard' and 'Rock Bottom')