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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBnWypnFiQc Last night I decided to give the synths a rest and record a simple piece on solo mellotron. You can hear it by clicking on the link above. I have a few observations. They are not meant as criticisms of the mellotron, I love mine and I am happy with how it plays and sounds. 1) The M400 was obviously designed for rock groups rather than home use and to be a backing rather than solo instrument. The Mark II and to a lesser extent the M300 are really home and solo machines. The raw sound output of an M400 seems to my ears to need an awful lot of processing, is this as much of an issue on a Mark II? Thinking back to the MarkII demo video it doesn't seem to be. 2) Playing my M400 as a solo keyboard it is really difficult to balance the right and left hands, the bass notes easily overwhelming the treble especially on the M300a strings and split choir a little less on the 3 violins and Mark II flute. It can be partially offset by equalisation and by not playing triads, I don't think it is a problem unique to #1565, Martin has sorted the headblock so it isn't an azimuth issue, and listening to tron solos they are often either a single melodic line eg. Seven Stones, Golf Girl, Exiles or a series of chord progressions eg Mocking bird, She said. So to me the best use of M400's are either as a musical "filler" using chords or as single line solos they are not really full keyboard instruments like a piano or organ. I suspect that this is not true of Mark II's M300's and M5000's. I assume that the new digital mellotron isn't going to allow you to play two independent voices at once , which is a shame as even a 25 note keyboard as on the Korg Micro X can be split to good effect. Mark PS I don't think I have ever managed to quite get rid of the smell of mouseshit from #1565, when it warms up I always have to play with a cat wrapped around my legs. PPS I am thinking of eventually buying some good powered speakers and recording them with a microphone. |