∗∗ First post warning! ∗∗
I'm a Virtual Mellotronist, who currently can't afford / has no room for /
lacks the basic skills to maintain - a real live Tron (M5000 one day when
the kids have grown up, though!), so I have to live with just the sound and
not the feel of a Tron for my own music.
I guess the debate will always come down to whether you enjoy the Mellotron
for the playing experience, or for the resultant sounds, or both. I can't
comment on the former, but from everything I've read, I get the impression
that the Tron is a remarkably responsive machine.
As a pianist I can appreciate the nuances of playing a real piano live and
solo over even the best quality sampled piano, but down on tape, mixed in
with other instruments, the audio result of using either will be much the
same (if not slightly biased towards the samples, since someone else has got
the mics right for you!). I guess that playing a real Mellotron versus
samples is a similar experience.
Maybe "soul" comes into it in two different ways - there's soul in the joy
of playing (where a real piano/tron will always feel nicer than the
samples), and there's soul in the result of a recording, where the
presentation of the sound in a finished work is the important thing.
So Memotron - not maybe something you'd sit at home and play for hours,
unlike the real thing, perhaps, but maybe something that would gig more
conveniently than the real thing or a raft of computer equipment. Although
I was disappointed to read (elsewhere) that the "classic" sound bank has had
noise and pinch-clicks _added_ to the raw sound...
Owen
--
Thinking Aloud
http://www.thinking-aloud.co.uk/ On 4/6/07 07:19, "Donald Tillman" <don@...> wrote:
>> From: "Mark Wallis" <markstuartwallis@...>
>> Sender: Mellotronists@yahoogroups.com
>>
>> Essentially - CONCEPTUALLY- it IS a Mellotron.
>
> This must be a use of the word "conceptually" that I am unfamiliar
> with.
>
>> Everyone who wants to use the sounds- and it's the sounds that
>> got us all in the first place- CAN in some form and the machine
>> itself has a future.
>
> Speak for yourself. No, the sounds didn't get us all here in the
> first place; for me, the music got me here. There's a difference.
>
>> Regarding the 'soul' aspect.. surely the sounds come from real
>> live wowing/ fluttering tron tapes in the first place- and as far
>> as I'm aware every note recorded onto the real live moving tapes
>> in MY M400 has sat inside a computer at some point... so it's
>> down to what you make of it.
>
> That's the Casio-is-a-Steinway argument; it's all sound, we copy the
> sound, therefore a Casio CONCEPTUALLY IS a Steinway. Yet remarkably,
> a Casio is nothing like a Steinway.
>
> You're abstracting out all the interesting stuff. The feedback from
> the touch of the keyboard, the feel of the tape under the keys, the
> ability to use pressure to control the dynamics, separate pressure
> control for individual notes ("polyphonic aftertouch"), a direct
> connection to the sound-making process as opposed to going through
> that ridiculous midi protocol, the delightfully quirky behavior of the
> tape handling mechanism, the relationship the musician has with the
> instrument's intrinsic workings that inspires the music.
>
> -- Don