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

ClayE wrote:

 

Are you on DRUGS Chris? If someone wanted to be adventurous live or in thestudio using a new digital Mellotron, there is nothing holding them back.

I'm struggling to think of many of the revered Prog Gods who used theMellotron 'adventurously'. It's not a particularly 'adventurous' instrument.You can use it up front, play it melodically, harmonise all over the place, andcertainly you can process the sound or do whatever else you like with it, but adventurous?You can dick about with synths adventurously because you can make them say whatyou want them to say, but a Mellotron string section is always going to soundlike a cello, a viola and three violins, all vaguely out of tune and allsounding monolithic. Ninety nine percent of the people who have put handto Tron have used it for block chords. Where is the adventure?

It's still a welcome surprise to hear it at all. I heard it on the intro afairly nondescript pop song a year or so ago while seated in the dentist'schair and exclaimed 'gucking gell!' as I was having my mouth seen to my anastonished dentist who thought she had accidentally probed through a raw nerve.