Mellotronists

<< I just got a used E6400 Ultra sampler.  Amazing how cheap these things 
have become..

What this means specifically is that I now have the facility to burn 32mb 
flash ROM cards for my Proteus 2000 module, so I can do the whole 
one-sample-per-note thing.  Of course, what I also have to do is actually find somewhere that 
has the flash ROM card in stock, but that's by the by. >>

I've just done exactly the same thing. older readers might remember I was 
having some grief with this earlier in the year, & getting nowhere with emu's 
tech support. turned out (& I found out the expensive way) that my e5000 ultra 
didn't like burning flash-rom-simm things. I bought three of these latter from 
emu while they still had them.

so recently I bought an e6400 ultra & tried again. now it works. I can use my 
own samples in my p2000, pk6 & planet earth modules.
& my 'tron samples are from my own kravitz-rivalling collection, so it's 
entirely my fault that they are slightly out-of-tune with each other....

it's worth the effort. compared to a regular sampler or rompler, the emu 
synth modules have an almost overwhelming modulation matrix (much better than the 
samplers themselves), allowing noise, s&h lfo, key-based randomness, velocity, 
aftertouch & realtime controllers to modulate pitch, amplitude, filter cutoff 
& even the sample start point. the key is to apply subtle amounts of these 
things.

in short, it's possible to recreate many of the foibles of the real thing 
(especially if there's one nearby to remind you of said foibles), including the 
playing-of-the-same-note-again-before-it's-rewound-properly effect. I 
especially like playing a big chord on the pk6 & leaning on the keyboard to make it 
drop about 20cents, something I would be loathe to do to a real 400, my own or 
anyone else's.

furthermore, if you build a patch like this (& remember- no slow attack or 
release, no chorus, no doubling-up of the samples.... keep it real), you can 
drop other samples into it that didn't come from a 'tron in the first place, & 
they will sound like they did. sort of.

32Mb is enough for quite a lot of 'tron sounds- I squeezed 16 sounds onto one 
stick, by choosing the notes carefully & adjusting the sampling rate. they 
are 6.5 seconds each....
rolling y'r own like this has several advantages over buying the emu 
"vintage" rom or just importing banks from a cd-rom into a sampler- you can "'tronify" 
almost any sound, they sound better, & they're unique to you.

duncan/1098/r.m.i.