Mellotronists

--- In Mellotronists@yahoogroups.com, Don Tillman <don@...> wrote:
>
>    > From: "charel196" <charel196@...>
>    > Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 12:25:22 -0000
>    > 
>    > I mean really, how far can you take the concept of a keyboard
>    > activated/pinch roller moving a tape across a head? 
> 
> With some imagination, creativity, design and engineering, there a lot
> you can do...

Care to elaborate? Like what...maybe a dat tape mellotron? Or using 24 track heads?:) Or 
VHS tape? Where there's any mechanical process involved with myriad adjustments there's 
always gonna be some problems down the road...
  I personally like the Memotron idea....take the whole tron/Chamberlin library into one 
high quality digital playback instrument...more like a digital MK2 with audiophile speaker 
system built in & high quality efx,eq, and so on.


> 
>    > Unfortunately, and this is just my opinion, nowadays there
>    > probably aren't a whole lot of folks who give a rat's ass about a
>    > new machine like this...just the hard core "enlightened" few like
>    > those here who know. Is Joe Public really going to care whether
>    > or not Fiona Apple is using samples or an M4000? Will any amount
>    > of technical improvements or innovation talk Mike Pinder out of
>    > using samples?
> 
> You have a point in the sense that today's musical instrument market
> has pretty much reduced a keyboard instrument to a plastic-box-with-a-
> computer-inside".  


as opposed to wooden box with tape recordings inside? What makes any instrument 
MUSICAL is the artist playing it...not the technology involved. You could make a whole 
album on rubber bands,combs, and jews harp. (hey there's an idea for new tron tapes...)
 Although to a point I agree with you about some of the homogenized aspects of the 
sounds coming out of a digital synth...


> 
> Which leaves the market for real keyboard Musical Instruments wide
> open.  There's actually a ton of opportunity here.
> 
>   -- Don
> 
> -- 
> Don Tillman
> Palo Alto, California
> don@...
> http://www.till.com
>