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

Bernie,
 The M400 was recorded in a very straightforward way. I did the tracks in my own home studio on Ableton live and then dragged the files onto protools in the main studio. I ran through my old Studiomaster 8x4 mixer with some mids up and then into a tube preamp to the interface. I put on a little of Live’s reverb which I like a lot (even though our engineer wanted the tracks flat). The 3Violin was from a tape set I bought from Markus and David in 2000. I brought quite a few “mellotron” albums into the studio and Brian and I came up with an eq on a focusrite plugin that we thought closely resembled the sound of a MKII. That meant adding lots of high end. There is some solo violin, mixed strings and that weird M300 string section that I like a lot added to some of the mellotron string parts. I double tracked but didn’t do too much of the separate panning because it got too mushy. My poor little tron was creaking badly and I really had to struggle with her. After the Cd was complete I had her rebuilt  and Streetly tapes were installed.
   I am presently setting up a new rig to record with. After the Tron Bro’s and Frank S. were so generous to give  detailed explanations of the way Pinder recorded I am planning to go through amplification and record from a mike. I have a nice little hammond reverb tank but I’d really like to set up a plate reverb. I think that this time I’ll be rolling off the high end instead of adding it (I want that Nelson Riddle string sound) and maybe bouncing over and back from analog tape.
Thanks again for listening!-Tom
   

 

Tom,

I've listened to the whole album and I like it very much.
Everybody's playing sounds really good. Your Tron is nicely
recorded. Are you using original tapes or a newer set? The 3 Violins
has a sweet sound, almost like a MkII. Did you run it through a tube
preamp? Care to share your Tron recording techniques? Double track
with stereo pan? Choice of reverb? EQ'ing, etc.?

Bernie (now listening to Stained Glass Stories)

--- In newmellotrongroup@yahoogroups.com <mailto:newmellotrongroup%40yahoogroups.com> , "tomdcour" <tomdcour@...>
wrote:
>
> Last night I posted some files from the last Cathedral album "The
Bridge".
> As the songs are rather long in their original state I put up
edited versions and had to
> "squash" them somewhat.
> Cathedral is a band that we formed in 1975, put out one
album "Stained Glass Stories" and
> then went the way of most things progressive in the late 90's.
> We put the thing back together shortly after I learned I could get
new Mellotron tapes and
> parts!
>  I used my dear old M400, a Kurzweil, and Akai Z4 sampler
primarily. The chamberlin
> sounds are sampled- done before I got my favorite ones on racks
(oboe, trumpet and
> cello)
>