--- In
Mellotronists@yahoogroups.com, Don Tillman <don@...> wrote:
>
> > From: "charel196" <charel196@...>
> > Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 12:25:22 -0000
> >
> > I mean really, how far can you take the concept of a keyboard
> > activated/pinch roller moving a tape across a head?
>
> With some imagination, creativity, design and engineering, there a lot
> you can do...
Care to elaborate? Like what...maybe a dat tape mellotron? Or using 24 track heads?:) Or
VHS tape? Where there's any mechanical process involved with myriad adjustments there's
always gonna be some problems down the road...
I personally like the Memotron idea....take the whole tron/Chamberlin library into one
high quality digital playback instrument...more like a digital MK2 with audiophile speaker
system built in & high quality efx,eq, and so on.
>
> > Unfortunately, and this is just my opinion, nowadays there
> > probably aren't a whole lot of folks who give a rat's ass about a
> > new machine like this...just the hard core "enlightened" few like
> > those here who know. Is Joe Public really going to care whether
> > or not Fiona Apple is using samples or an M4000? Will any amount
> > of technical improvements or innovation talk Mike Pinder out of
> > using samples?
>
> You have a point in the sense that today's musical instrument market
> has pretty much reduced a keyboard instrument to a plastic-box-with-a-
> computer-inside".
as opposed to wooden box with tape recordings inside? What makes any instrument
MUSICAL is the artist playing it...not the technology involved. You could make a whole
album on rubber bands,combs, and jews harp. (hey there's an idea for new tron tapes...)
Although to a point I agree with you about some of the homogenized aspects of the
sounds coming out of a digital synth...
>
> Which leaves the market for real keyboard Musical Instruments wide
> open. There's actually a ton of opportunity here.
>
> -- Don
>
> --
> Don Tillman
> Palo Alto, California
> don@...
> http://www.till.com
>