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I think they must have had that option to speed the tape up anoctave;
I believe the Beatles or rather George Martin /Norman Smith usedto do a similar trick on tracks on albums as early as “PleasePlease Me” and “With The Beatles”,
though in this case with the tape playing at halfspeed, and theactual part played an octave down.I think even the solo of “A HardDay’s Night” was done with this trick ,
with piano and Rickenbacker 12 string.
Jimi Hendrix did the halfspeed trick on “3rd StoneFrom The Sun” from the Are You Experienced album. Gotta love thosebackwards bits : )
From: newmellotrongroup@yahoogroups.com[mailto:newmellotrongroup@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruce Daily
Sent: woensdag 23 januari 2008 7:21
To: newmellotrongroup@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [newmellotrongroup] Re: mike pinder's sound
Hi all-
Yup, they sure didn't have that fancy little
half-speed switch back then. I should've remarked
that the brass track could've been recorded at twice
the normal speed (30 ips) on the multitrack tape to
achieve the "half-speed" effect on playback (at 15
ips). That is, of course, if they had those speed
selections on their recording equipment at that time.
-Bruce D.
--- Rick Blechta <rick@rickblechta.com>wrote:
>__________________________________________________________
> On Jan 22, 2008, at 4:58 PM, Bruce Daily wrote:
>
> > Sounds like the drone in "Question" may have been
> a
> > half-speed brass of some kind. The opening fanfare
> > (on the orig. album)is anyone's guess. He was also
> > incorporating his Moog a lot on "AQOB".
>
> One thing that should be mentioned to those who have
> never played a
> MkII is that the pitch range is a great deal bigger
> than what is
> available on an M400 and all later mellotrons. So
> Pinder was unlikely
> to have needed to do anything other than turn his
> pitch control way
> down to drop an octave. (Not having my MkII here in
> front of me, I
> can't tell you exactly what the range is; anyone
> else care to step in?)
>
> Another notable low-pitch mellotron part in "Devil's
> Triangle" by King
> Crimson, might be slowed down, but possible not.
>
> I wonder why the pitch sweep was smaller on later
> mellotrons. David
> and Markus's half-speed switch is a good effort to
> correct this, but
> I've always wondered why that feature was changed.
> It's great for all
> sorts of things in the studio -- or for vocalists
> who can't cut parts
> in the original key. You get to watch the guitarists
> suffer through
> trying to transpose while you just twiddle a knob
> and are ready to
> go. ;)
>
> Rick