Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists
Subject: Re: [Mellotronists] Re: check it off
From: MAinPsych@...
Date: 2003-12-02
In a message dated 12/1/03 4:29:34 PM Pacific Standard Time, capt_carbonarc@... writes:
Now that the great turkey cooking and eating and leftovering has taken place, I am back in the office and it's time to reveal the facts about those recordings. They were both recorded by the same fellow, a 25-year-old kid who has lived his whole life in Texas! Yes, it's truly amazing how well he was able to imitate the early '68
sound of the Moody Blues. He performed all the parts himself on the "London Is Behind Me" track including the John Lodge falsetto and the Justin Hayward double-tracked vocals. Though he owns an M400 and plays it in his 'regular' band (thats the other link), he used an Akai Z4 sampler and Roland midi controller keyboard with samples from the Mike Pinder Mellotron CD-Rom. He even sampled the
drum intro to Departure (from This Is The Moody Blues) to create a rhythm track that sounds correct for the era. The end result was very convincing...and very enjoyable.
So it appears I was correct in referring to the track as sounding like a poor man's Moody Blues?? It sounded like JH at times but then it didn't at others. The "Lodge" high harmonies threw me for a loop. But what really led me to believe that it was phony was the tron itself. The quality of the recording and the song itself really dates it to the pre-"Days" era (a la tracks on the "Prelude" CD). A close listen to that CD reveals that Mike Pinder only played single or double note lines, no full chords, most likely due to the fact that his MkII (maybe #134?) had not yet been upgraded and still affected by voltage overload (note sagging) when playing a fistful of notes. "London" has nice full chords in it, but also not quite really played in Pinder's legato style. The tonality of the tron is also a bit off from the Moodies' sound that we all know and love.
Still, a very nice job...
Frank Samagaio
MkII #134 / M400 #908 / Pinder CD-ROM