Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: The Mellotron Group

Charles -

I tend to agree, to a point. The thing about digitised Mellotrons is not the process of digitising them, but that of the processing that gets done as a result. Tuning. Equalising. Normalising. De-noising. By the time all that gets done (and it does) it's another instrument.

I have sampled my 3-violins and left it the hell alone. I would absolutely defy anyone to tell which was which. If someone could sample that sound and leave it as it is then they might be onto something.

It's also only fair to point out that tape (and to a lesser extent the amps in Mellotrons) brings about its own characteristics which are lost in direct samples from source to digits.

I had an Emulator a long time ago, along with Classic keys. If you couldn't tell that from a Mellotron then someone has hearing issues!

Mike

On 22/01/2011 13:48, Charles wrote:

 

I just don't get all this "it's not a Mellotron" talk....the digital unit is a logical progression from tape replay and Ill bet Harry Chamberlin would have moved into this area if he were alive now. The whole point was playing instrument sounds on a keyboard, not the tape technology (which was the only method available)
If all sounds are from original tapes and only last 8 seconds and are the best digital representations that can be done, personally to me it's a new Mellotron.It's the offspring of the tape machine. So what that it doesn't use Chamberlin heads etc. With EQ'ing and processing I imagine you can get near 1000% close.
Heck I have used samples on my albums (from my EMU E4K, EMAX 1, and CLASSIC KEYS) sometimes on the same songs I used my real M400 (when I had it) and I defy anyone to tell me which is which. And the E4K was using the Pinder CD. The M4000D samples are said to be way beyond the Pinder CD in quality. I think it's totally anal to hang on to tape playback technology as the only thing that can be called "Mellotron" or "Chamberlin". The 4000D is just a new and different model in the family tree....made by the people who own the name and masters.