Oh good! Now I won't have to take the front cover off so often to show
people. Neato!
However I must admit that it's one of life's simple pleasures, when we have
a visitor (like from work) who is a technical person but not a musician, and
I say "you gotta see this", and I fire up a tron and show the guts while it
plays a mixed choir or something. Sometimes they fall over.
- Gene
-----Original Message-----
From:
kenmerb@... [mailto:
kenmerb@...]
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 11:02 AM
To:
mellotronists@yahoogroups.comSubject: [Mellotronists] Mellotron Demo
OK, I've been waiting for a good time to show everyone something I found on
the internet, so here it is. It's a demonstration of the operation of a
single note of a mellotron, complete with moving graphics and sound. And
it's interactive. Just click on the mellotron key to play the note, and
you'll see what happens mechanically inside a mellotron to make the sound
play. Here's the link:
http://www.keyboardmuseum.org/v_teach/mellotron.htmlMost of you probably know how this works, but it is a good visual.
And, in case someone asks what's to gain by "rounding" the edges of your
pinch rollers, this will help show you. By rounding the edges, the rollers
tend to drive the tape in a straighter path, reducing the chance that it
will go off to the side and wrap around the roller, as happened to Rick's
SFX machine at 'Tronto II (hi Frank ;-). This is usually only done on pinch
rollers that have gone hard and are somewhat concave, causing the problem.
If yours are like that, or if you've had trouble with tape wrapping around
the pinch rollers, rounding the edges could be a solution.
The "virtual mellotron" demo is courtesy of Joseph Rivers, who runs a
keyboard museum in Orlando (but no mellotron, last time I checked). He's
given me the complete tour, and it's quite a place.
Ken M.