Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gordon Reid" <gordon@...>
> Hi Martin et al,
>
> Although I don't often chip in on the list, I thought that I would answer
> the "new sounds?" question with an anecdote:
>
> When Nick and I recorded "Julia" for the Rime Of The Ancient Sampler, we
> made a special effort to be creative, and to use the Mellotron in as many
> ways as we could. We created swell brass sounds, employed lesser known
> tapes such as the piano, the bass guitar, an acoustic (12 string?)
> guitar... and used as many effects with those sounds as we could. We also
> used a few old favourites: the Mk2 Strings, one of the Flutes, and a tiny
> bit of Combined Choir. In the end, almost everything on the track apart
> from the percussion track, Clive's guitar, the bass pedals and some
> synthesised saxophone was played on Mellotron.
>
> When the CD was released, most people were very kind, and said that they
> liked the track, but wasn't it a shame that there was so little Mellotron
> on it!
>
> When questioned, it transpired that the only sounds that they recognised
> as Mellotron were the Flute and Mk2 strings. I soon gave up explaining
> that the piano was Mellotron, the double tracked acoustic guitar included
> Mellotron, the swelled brass was Mellotron, the 'synthesiser' ensemble
> was Mellotron... This is doubly interesting because most of the people
> with whom I had the conversation were Mellotron
> owners/players/aficionados, themselves.
>
> In the face of this, I am unsurprised that everybody sticks to the
> classic violins/flute/choir of one sort or another.
>
> All the best,
> Gordon.
> (Who will make a decision about that frame soon, honest!)

Gordon makes some terrific points about what comes to mind when we say the
word "mellotron". It's that mental "ah ha" on hearing the classic 'tron
strings, 8 voice choir, or 'tron brass: the vintage sounds that are always
going to be linked to the instrument. He also raises an issue that's
important to a project like Systems Theory with all the different things
done for "Julia" on "The Rime..." CD [one of the better tunes on it, IMO].
The fact that Mike Dickson can get so many different sounds out of his 'tron
is important to us. For example, the Steve Hackett guitar frame has given
us the opportunity to do some things with ∗guitar∗ that otherwise require a
real guitar player...with some ability [don't look in my direction...I'm the
man with 10 arthritic thumbs]. We'll make sure that the liner notes on the
debut CD explain all the things that Mike does with his 'tron, because
Mike's ∗axework∗ on "Red Sun Fading" sounds authentic, and we'd like to
avoid the "too bad there's not more 'tron on it" comments.
--
Cheers,
SDM -- a 21st century schizoid man
www.systemstheory.net
www.thecleanersystem.com