Mellotronists

Hello all,

I usually just lurk here, not being a tron owner, or even a musician in 
the usual sense of the word, but the recent discussions about "that 
sound" and the idea of developing a digital tron substitute have made me 
do some thinking about what it is that I find so compelling about the 
sound of these things. (Oops - thinking again. Usually means trouble).

I agree with the consensus about what That Sound is. But there are other 
sounds that have just as much an emotional impact on me. Sounds that can 
only come from one of these machines. Something to do with translating 
the performance of some instrument, like say a saxophone, to a keyboard, 
and allowing the player to create a sound that couldn't have been 
created by the original sax player. One finger, one sax. Three fingers, 
three saxes. Keyboards articlulate and blend sounds in a completely 
different way than one or three sax players.

Okay, any sampler can do that. But there's still something that can't be 
duplicated. There's a fat quality to the sound. Something warm and 
organic. Mysterious. Something that for whatever reason can't be created 
with a digital sampler. It must have something to do with the tape and 
the heads and the preamps. (Norm Leete proposed a theory once that had 
to do with the goodness of the sound being proportional to the number of 
asynchronous tone generators - or something like that - and I agree 
completely).

And yet there's still something more: knowing that something that sounds 
so incredibly sweet is actually coming from some guy with a box that has 
more in common with a sewing machine than a flute or a violin or a 
saxophone. I think that's just as important. It's weird that such a 
wonderful sound can be made by such a mechanical contraption. Maybe 
that's why the non-savy listener doesn't get it.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

    http://www.maytag.homelinux.com/sound.html

This is the bridge from Aimee Mann's "It Takes All Kinds". Listen for 
the alto saxes. M2 Chamberlin played by Patrick Warren.

Does anybody else feel this way about it? (i.e. the discrepency between 
the sound and the works in the box) Or have I just been drinking too 
much wine?

Bob S.