Mellotronists

Hey Mattias,
Although you do occassionally hear the rhythms...and in the 
strangest places! I've heard...I think it was the Bossa on an advert 
for Taco' or rice or something. Last month we visited the National 
Space Centre in Leicester ('cause my step daughter wants to do 
something spacey at Univ next year) and they have a fancy 
planetarium there where they show (surround-vision??) films about 
interplanetary exploration. They came to this bit about the 
proposed Mars robots and rovers crawling all over the landscape 
accompanied by.....the MKII Dixieland Jazz rhythm with a MkII sax 
melody line...complete with Bill Fransen's YEAH!! at the end. I'm 
sure these are all off virtual tron samples now they are more widely 
available and not a real MkII - although you never know!
Wierd!.
John



  

Hey hey,

Had the weird experience to record percussion on a recording of 
ALWsJesus Christ superstar that a friend of mine is doing and 
they had almost entirely used Mellotron and Chamberlin sounds for 
Strings, Oboes some voices but it really sounded flat and weird. 
Still had that weird ambience to it but didn´t have the right 
Kapaooww feeling. I think for instance the sampled Chamberlin 
stuff sounds great due to Harry Chamberlins great recordings of the 
instruments but when they are so clean and Hifi they just turn into 
weird Cellos sounds with the vibrato in the wrong places. Couldn´t 
help putting on some Fiona Apple when I got back home just to 
check that I wasn't all wrong and all of a sudden all the 
spinetingling came back. 

I think the most important thing is when youuse Mellotron samples 
is to get some of the original grittiness in there...pull it through an 
amp and mike it so it has some sonic framing to it. I do that a lot 
with my 400 pulling it through a Guitar amp with just a bit of Spring 
(no...not the band) reverb and it just sounds...right at least to my 
ears.If you doubletrack it ( if it is strings for instance)and pan hard 
lef/right and then add root notes on the Cello....you are home.

Slight sidestep...I once used a Optigan drum loop on a pop track 
and whenI showed up at the studio the next day...the exhausted 
engineer proclaimed proudly that he had spent the previous 
nightcleaning up the loop getting all the scatchiness and clicks 
and cracks out...A difficult discussion followed. 

I don´t want to be lengthy about this but another thing is...If you are 
using samples. One should try to play the sample in a original-
sound manner. If you listen to the big Mellotron players it sounds 
great because they are adapting the playing to the instrument. 
Some notes are out of tune...so don´t play em et.c et.c Big 
massive chords didn´t always work out so you break itdowninto 
parts. John Paul Jones talked about approaching recording 
Mellotron parts as in viewing it as a String section. Everyone plays 
more or less one note interacting with the others creating chords 
and melodies.

What I am trying to get at is I think the samples are pretty decent. 
But the Mellotron isn´t a perfect instrument. If you play incredibly 
fast runs on a sample of the 3 violins it won´t sound like Tony 
Banks,King Crimsonor Rick Wakeman. And it won´t have 
anything to do with the sample.

An interesting thing is also the fact that all of a sudden there must 
thousands upon thousands of people with samples of the weirdest 
Mellotron sounds available and Ihave so far (to my knowledge) 
never heard anyone use any of the Mark II organs or the electric 
guitar. It is still the same old strings and choirs...Seems like a 
terrible waste of opportunities. 

Best regards,

Mattias Olsson
Roth Händle Studios, Stockholm
www.roth-handle.nu