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

Yes, I'll be updating the web pages in time. Quite a lot of the soundsyou hear are not what you expect. On mellotronworks  I playfast and loose with tunings; to get the range of sounds I need I oftendetune the instrument down by a fifth (or more), usually using thelittle yellow nut on the control board as it's more accurate (IMO) thanthe pitch control. I'm also not averse to recording things at the wrongpitch and the wrong speed to get a particularly fast run in place or avery sonorous bass. (The bass in the Barber piece is a blend ofslowed-down string section and the new cello)

The soft synths I use on my existing recordings are a varied bunch. TheMagnus Choir is good but I find most of the voices are quite similar toeach other. Havign said that it's cheap and a bargain. The Organux softsynth is pretty good too, although I have an issue with both in that ifI record a track using them then they always revert to thefirst voice when I reload the track layout and have to reset the voice.Quite annoying. (I'm using ACID Pro for all of this, so cannot commenton whether or not it happens with other recording software) My onlyother complaint about them is that their demos are great but the'purchase encouragement tone' that occurs throughout is so loud itbecomes VERY hard to hear the demo. Some other soft synths do thinglike having rolling sounds of white noise every so often which renderthe demo useless for stealing but which also doesn't cause youreyeballs to bulge every time it goes off in your headphones.

I haven't heard anything about Omnisphere.

Mike


Bernie wrote:

Mike,

Your hard work is paying off for all of us...great music at a
bargain price!!

On the web pages for In Excelsis and Six Consequences, you list the
Mellotron sounds that you used in each recording. It's nice to hear
some of the new sounds in the context of a musical piece. Will you
eventually update the other pages to list the Mellotron sounds as
well?

I couldn't help but notice that you have used some softsynths like
Magnus Choir, Angelina, Atmosphere and Trilogy. I'm a big fan of
Magnus Choir and Atmosphere. Any interest in Omnisphere?

Bernie

--- In newmellotrongroup@ yahoogroups. com,Mike Dickson
<mike.dickson@ ...> wrote:
>
> It's a fairly open secret among a few people here that I'm workng
on a
> fifth and (if planning is right, final) album which I hope to have
> released some time soon.
>
> The album will be my take on a number of well-known classical
works,
> recorded by me over the preceding five months or so. I don't read
music
> and so it has been a slow and painful process at times, with me
> invariably surrounded by musical charts of my own creation as well
as
> coloured scores, annotated manuscripts and post-it notes
everywhere in
> sight. However, I have pressed on despite all the difficulties as
I
> think the end result is going to be extremely worthwhile and comes
with
> a bit of a twist.
>
> The one major difference between this and other attempts to record
these
> pieces is that /everything /on the album will be played on the
Mellotron.
>
> The album is to be called ∗/mellotronworks /∗and I've taken the
bold
> step of giving the good readers of this mailing list a preview.
You can
> download my version of Samuel Barber's 1936 masterpiece /Adagio
for
> Strings/ from the following link:
> http://www.mikedick son.org.uk/ mellotronworks/ Barbers%20Adagio .mp3
>
> Comments welcomed.
>
> --
> Mike Dickson, Edinburgh
>
> Free Music Project: http://www.last. fm/music/ Mike+Dickson
> Or http://www.mikedick son.org.uk/
>

-- Mike Dickson, EdinburghFree Music Project: http://www.last.fm/music/Mike+DicksonOr http://www.mikedickson.org.uk/