Mellotronists

In a message dated 12/1/03 4:29:34 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
capt_carbonarc@... writes:


> Now that the great turkey cooking and eating and leftovering has taken 
> place, I am back in the office and it's time to reveal the facts about those 
> recordings.  They were both recorded by the same fellow, a 25-year-old kid who 
> has lived his whole life in Texas! Yes, it's truly amazing how well he was able 
> to imitate the early '68
> sound of the Moody Blues.  He performed all the parts himself on the "London 
> Is Behind Me" track including the John Lodge falsetto and the Justin Hayward 
> double-tracked vocals.  Though he owns an M400 and plays it in his 'regular' 
> band (thats the other link), he used an Akai Z4 sampler and Roland midi 
> controller keyboard with samples from the Mike Pinder Mellotron CD-Rom.  He even 
> sampled the
> drum intro to Departure (from This Is The Moody Blues) to create a rhythm 
> track that sounds correct for the era.  The end result was very 
> convincing...and very enjoyable.

So it appears I was correct in referring to the track as sounding like a poor 
man's Moody Blues??  It sounded like JH at times but then it didn't at 
others.  The "Lodge" high harmonies threw me for a loop.  But what really led me to 
believe that it was phony was the tron itself.  The quality of the recording 
and the song itself really dates it to the pre-"Days" era (a la tracks on the 
"Prelude" CD).  A close listen to that CD reveals that Mike Pinder only played 
single or double note lines, no full chords, most likely due to the fact that 
his MkII (maybe #134?) had not yet been upgraded and still affected by voltage 
overload (note sagging) when playing a fistful of notes.  "London" has nice 
full chords in it, but also not quite really played in Pinder's legato style.  
The tonality of the tron is also a bit off from the Moodies' sound that we all 
know and love.

Still, a very nice job...

Frank Samagaio
MkII #134 / M400 #908 / Pinder CD-ROM