Mellotron question.

[Ingo Debus]

Roman Sowa wrote:
> 
> forgive my stupid question, but...
> what makes mellotron so great sounding?

This question isn't stupid at all.. it is one of the three most
interesting questions in musical electronics (the other two are: "what
makes a Hammond organ so great sounding?" and "what makes a Minimoog so
great sounding?").

> What were original sounds recorded on mellotron tapes?
> string ensemble and choirs?

There also were orchestra, sax, flute, oboe....

and Juergen Haible wrote:

>Its imperfections. Really.

But that's not all. When using Mellotron samples with a sampler and most
of the imperfections are no longer there, there's still a lot of magic
in the sound. Mellotron string samples are completely different from any
other string samples. The same with wind instrument sounds. Maybe they
did more effort when recording the instruments back then than today. I
don't know.

Ingo