Mellotronists

...so as to leave the real one safe at home, aswell as for non-owners, is a 
pretty subjective matter, but one we all encounter from time to time. I was 
afraid that tips like this would be taboo somehow... almost heretical. but let's 
face it, the thing has quirks. 

<< knowing that many of you have used samples, synths, and other methods of 
trying to capture the feel of the real thing, I wanted to share this wonderful 
and simple-to-implement means of giving your reproduction a little more of the 
character of the real thing! >> (the temperament change in the korg kx5)

a great tip. I discovered the same microtonal adjustments in the proteus 
boxes, along with a dozen fixed tuning schemes including 19-tone. does strange 
things to how you look at a keyboard.

in the same modules, I have routed quite a bit of modulation to the single 
voice. there is no chorussing or filter sweep, and the key action is gated- no 
attack, no release. bit of reverb where it's called for, but most of these 
sounds are perfectly useable in in-your-face mode. they aren't identical, 
obviously, to the real thing, but needs-must.
I send a tiny bit of noise to the fine pitch and the amp-volume.
I use keyboard-random (fresh random value for each key pressed) to open and 
close the filter a bit.
I use a second separate key-random to vary the sample start-point.
there is no velocity sensitivity enabled.
aftertouch (and I mean, /leaning/ on it) will drop the pitch slightly and 
increase the noise>pitch mod.

this made an enormous difference to the likeness of emu's own 'tron samples 
(on an emu "vintage" rom) and has saved me some memory..... the tiny tuning 
tweaks are the icing.

<<'Burn flash-ROMs'? D'you mean you can actually burn sample chips for your 
Proteus? Clever stuff...>>

yes, for all the above practical reasons and for the sake of preserving 
something of my own sound engineering skills instead of always using someone else's 
presets or risking a sampler w/ hard drive on t'road. the irony is buying a 
sampler to facilitate this procedure...

it ain't cheap, all this flash-bang high tech. I rounded up the proteus 
modules one by one starting with the doomed audity and it's expansion rom. great 
synth and percussion sounds, bit weak on "reality". 
I learned how to edit the emu way, but the thing wouldn't take any of the emu 
roms, so I was stuck for nice keyboard sounds.  
but now I've got the proteus-proper, for which you can burn a pair of flash 
simms, 32Mb each, using a sampler that cost £400 or so. the simms are 
pricey.... the same box, this tiny proteus thing, has 128 voices and 32 midi channels, 
and 6 outputs, and holds two of the factory roms aswell as two of y'r own. 
there are two basic effects units in it too. it's pretty good. this is all so I 
can travel more easily with the sounds of /my/ mellotron, with my personalised 
solid-state rendition of it cryogenically frozen in silicon. or something. 
what I should do is stick a little photo of 1098 on it's front.

and the tape choices are obscure; we'll be packing stuff that people don't 
normally associate with the 'tron but that will be strangely, eerily familiar. 
the clarinets.... the hammond... the rhodes.... the piano.... gary's e-bowed 
strat recorded onto 1/4" and played back on the 400..... gothic.... 
mediaeval..... plucked.... 
and some of the obvious stuff that emu got wrong, basically- the brass, 
3-violins, 300b, string section w/ bowed bass, 8-voice and male choirs ("tron 
blokes" my emu preset says), the cello.
it looks like a lot but most of that will fit one one of these two 32Mb 
thingies.
 
my samples are all four seconds or over and this emu sampler makes short work 
of looping the last 1/4 very nicely, steering clear of distinguishing 
features, and with no obvious artefacts around the loop point. it helps to pick 
smooth notes from the source set- I compensate for this slight removal of essential 
character by making sure I sample notes with obvious character in their 
attack, then back this off on certain notes (see above) by altering the sample 
start-point. this is somewhat analogous to moving the end of the tape back and 
forth whilst loading a new tape.....

(went on for about another half-hour raving about the ease of editing and 
relative value of the various keyboard-version proteus boxes; grab one if you can 
at £300 or less and buy roms before creative shut the whole hardware side of 
emu down for good.)

duncan/1098- "I've played every single one of my tapes this week and I'm 
bloody tired"

After reading the ferrograh thread, I'm exhausted, confused and committed to 
putting reliable Mellotrons onstage.

Whew!!!

Frank