Mellotronists

> From: "charel196" <charel196@...>
   > Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 13:31:09 -0000
   > 
   > --- In Mellotronists@yahoogroups.com, Don Tillman <don@...> wrote:
   > > 
   > > 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?

None of those are really practical.  (Trying to imagine the VHS
mechanism respond to playing a note is absolutely hilarious!)

Here are a bunch of possibilities:

  Use the Chamberlin rewind mechanism.
 
  Refine the pressure pad mechanism to get more pressure control.
  Maybe adjustable pressure control.

  Wire the tape heads for a stereo pan.

  Tape echo built in with the tapes.  Sound on sound too.

  More tracks; you could probably fit 12 tracks on 3/8-inch tape, 
  with a stereo 8-track head to pull off two tracks at a time.

  Include a RhythmMate mechanism, since drum machines are so popular
  with the young people these days.

  Come up with a way for the 'tron to record tapes.  You could have a
  USB connection and download a custom set of sounds.

  Optical tron, record on film.  (!?!?)

  Vibrato by modulating the motor speed (I tried that, it's truly
  awful... I'm just sayin'...)

See, it's not difficult.  There really are lots of possibilities.

   > Where there's any mechanical process involved with myriad
   > adjustments there's always gonna be some problems down the
   > road...

So all musical instruments involving a mechanical proces are doomed to
failure?  Tell that to Steinway.

   > 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.

I think the Memotron is effectively putting a Casio behind a cardboard
cutout of a Mellotron.  It completely removes the wonderful expressive
operation of the Mellotron, it has completely gratuitious limitations
just to copy the Mellotron, and it offers nothing of its own.

   > as opposed to wooden box with tape recordings inside? What makes
   > any instrument MUSICAL is the artist playing it...not the
   > technology involved.

That sounds like the marxist academic philosophy that says that
"anything that can make a sound that could possibly be used for music
is a musical instrument".  Which is immediately followed by "no
musical instruments are inherently better than others", and "if you
think otherwise we're gonna brand you as an elitist snob we're gonna
send the stormtroopers over to impound your Steinway grand and replace
it with a Casio".  And so craftsmanship in musical instrument
construction would be a waste of time and money, keeping Casios from
the proletariat and generally causing unrest, so we'll be jailing the
craftsmen too.

Frank Zappa could make music out of absolutely anything; are the
stoner mumblings and "snorks" heard on "Lumpy Gravy" musical
instruments?

And there might not even be a requirement that the thing make a sound.
What about the piano in Cage's 4'33''?  What about Bruford's drums in
King Crimson's "Trio"?

So *anything* is a musical instrument?  Does the term have any meaning
whatsover?  Is a trash can lid the musical equivalent of a Mellotron,
and if so, would you have any objections to me taking the Mellotron
and leaving you with the trash can lid?

As Casio and the other digital sample players have shown us, making a
specific sound is the least important thing that a musical instrument
does.  You can play back an exact copy of a sound of a proper Musical
Instrument yet the exact copy is not a musical instrument.  We should
know this... lip syncing has been around a very long time and deals
with similar issues.  You go to a concert to experience a performance,
not a recording.

What is important is that the instrument inspire the musician, it
serves as the voice of the musician, it allows the musician to have
their personality shine through, it is the vehicle for the music
listeners to hear the musician.  The musical instrument needs depth
and quirks, it needs sweet spots that beckon to be explored.  It
invites the musician to develop playing techniques and provides
rewards along the way.

In practice, it's the process that the instrument uses to create the
sound that makes it, not the sound itself.  The musician interacts
with the process, guides it, molds it, shapes it, tweaks it, has a
conversation with it, and this is where the magic can happen, this is
the level that the musician works at.  This is what artists do,
whether it's paint, ceramics, dance, whatever.

The Mellotron works not as a sample player, but as an instrument in
its own right.  The process of pulling sound off of a magnetic tape
under your fingers is remarkably musical and expressive, so much so
that what's actually recorded on the tape matters less than the
operation of playing it back.

  -- Don

-- 
Don Tillman
Palo Alto, California
don@...
http://www.till.com