Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists

Thank you, Clay. I'd like to say to everybody here that I am honored
by all of the kind comments you have made about my band, particularly
with the understanding that of all the people in the world, a very
high percentage of you have ears that are pleased by the same things
that mine are and to know that what I am doing properly tickles the
ears of listeners like you means that I am accomplishing what I have
set out to do.

Warning, boring small synth trivia from here on out. We never
rehearsed this song together before the first time we played it
together at a gig (this recording was not the first time) and it came
out just the way it is since we had all played it in many other bands
before and knew the arrangement intimately, and I still had a
keyboard setup for it left over from a previous band.

Once again, all of the keyboard parts come from one Korg X5D with no
external effects and no sequencing or other playback. The single
keyboard setup starts at the left with a custom patch that contains a
string ensemble waveform and a French horn waveform, with the string
wave manifesting itself at low velocities as a 'tronnish string pad
which crossfades to the French horn at higher velocities. There is a
low-volume single patch that combines a different string ensemble
waveform and a choral "aah" waveform with no velocity crossfades that
is an octave above the string/horn layer and is brought in at high
velocities. This covers about the bottom two octaves of the five-
octave keyboard. Ascending above the previous layer to about an
octave-and-a-half below the top of the keyboard is a two-oscillator
octave string ensemble pad layered with a similar pad made of
chorused sawtooth waveforms that simply doubles the string ensemble
pad, but it is brought in by MIDI pedal and is programmed to pitch-
bend an octave, which gives me the polyphonic chordal portamento that
starts the song and is also the loud string lines in the guitar solo
sections and the ostinato line over the left-hand string pad in the
bridge sections. The top octave-and-a-half consists of a couple of
different layers of octave choir patches, detuned and layered
asymmetrically to give a bit of that individual note feel of the 8-
voice choir, with two layers of bell and glockesnpiel sounds that are
brought in at EXTREME velocity for the "just a little pinprick" BLING
sound. I use a stereo hall reverb with the EQ tweaked down a bit to
hide the aliasing noise somewhat, and have a hall/delay from the
other onboard stereo effect processor that is dynamically brought in
by the mod wheel. I do not use the mod wheel for any vibrato or time-
based effects on this combination setup, just for effects
manipulation, and the pitch-bend is wheel is set to only bend the
chorused sawtooth string pad in the middle of the keyboard.

So, all said, it's sort of a couple of ocatves of left hand string
and horn parts with velocity crossfade control, a couple of octaves
of right hand string parts with pitch-bend, velocity and MIDI pedal
control, and all the way at the top about an octave-and-a-half of
choir/string/bell parts with velocity control, and effects on the lot
with dynamic mod-wheel control.

It may seem like a lot of work to do this on one instrument instead
of a multiple keyboard rig, but once the layer is programmed, it is
so easy and natural to play, to mix, and to set up, and so much fun
to use the mod wheel and pitch wheel and MIDI pedal controller to
play it all on one instument, as well as a fun puzzle to put the
layers together in a way that is effective that I have just grown to
love playing this way. It avoids a lot of the common problems
associated with a large rig, and I really love watching the other
players come in and just walk away shaking their heads. I think in
some ways using an artifically restricted medium can actually
elucidate the best and most cohesive results. Sometimes too many
choices leads to bad choices.