Mellotronists

Although I'm thankfully no longer married to her, I still would have let anybody have my ex-wife before my Mellotron. There's LOTS of women in the world...

Anyhow, although I use no real samplers and all my stuff is either sample playback or synthesis (except for the Mellotron, the Hammond, and the Solovox, of course,) I wish I had something I could do the same with and sample every single note at maximum fidelity off my own M400.

I know I may be in a minority, and I don't claim to have "golden ears" after the years of abuse I've exposed mine to (I'm no Pete Townsend, but I'm sure I have SOME loss - I must!) but for me, fidelity has always taken a back seat to musicality, and that is exactly what I love about the Mellotron. I still have a strong preference for audio on TAPE (I suspect there's a couple of you out there with that same "bias" - I mean, using an email handle like "ferrograph" certainly would seem to point in that direction!) and I find digital, no matter how good it is, to be lacking in an undefinable warmth. It can sound really great, but it still has a certain emptiness that I just can't describe.

I strongly believe that the musicality of the Mellotron comes from the combination of the warmth of tape and the strong individual character of each note. Each key is a complete audio universe in and of itself, each note has its' own unique personality and ambience that constantly changes through the course of the entire note playback, and I maintain that there is no way to completely reproduce that other than with the real thing. It's gotten to the point in the nine months I've FINALLY possessed my own Mellotron that I can recognize individual notes, not by the pitch, but by the character of the note - that low D in 3-violins is about the sweetest sound on Earth, and I know it the moment I hear it anywhere now. As far as I am concerned, anybody that brands the Mellotron a lo-fi instrument really has no understanding of what the instrument is all about, and I feel sorry for them. I have never been so constantly excited by an instrument - you know, when you get a new synth, you get that rush as you go through all the factory sounds, and find these new worlds of audio that give you little flashes of inspiration, and then, a few weeks later, the novelty has worn off, and it becomes just another instrument - the passion fades and dies. That has yet to happen with #886 and it only has THREE sounds, not hundreds! And, I doubt that it ever will happen. Each time I play with it, new nuance comes to my attention, new ideas spring forth, it's like the difference between reading a piece of great literature and watching a Schwarzenegger flick. They're both great the first time through, but...

Jon E Salley
MiloJohnson@...
M400 #886

Just completed a **big** sampling session with my beloved (the Mellotron not the missus :o).

All 35 notes on Flute, 3 Violins and 8-Voice Choir, 7 secs. at 44.1kHz=a lot of memory (and Zip disks). I was inspired to do this after reflecting on some comments posted here over the months about Mellotron high frequency content. Comparing my new samples with the Pinder CD-ROM (and older 22.05kHz samples taken from my M400) it does seem worth capturing the treble frequencies (much brighter and more vibrant sound). So the crappy old **lo-fi** proto-sampler is not so lo-fi after all.....