Mellotronists

-----Original Message-----
From: Mellotronists@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Mellotronists@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of jonesalley
Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2006 12:12 PM
To: Mellotronists
Subject: [Mellotronists] my one cent

I'll probably regret weighing in on this contentious issue, but here goes.

Let's talk about cars. Many people in this country would like to own a big-block Shelby Cobra, a 1969 Chevrolet Yenko Camaro, or a Porsche Speedster like the one James Dean died in. Top-notch examples of these three cars are today going for averages of a half-million dollars or more, and most of the people who pay that kind of money for them either hermetically seal them as museum exhibits and investments that they hope to reap profits from later on, or drive them a mile or two a month and spend the rest of the time polishing them in masturbatory ecstasy.

You can now buy incredibly accurate and authentic replicas of all three of these vehicles for the price of a normal luxury car, sixty to eighty thousand dollars. The replicas are not the real thing, but they provide the looks, a lot of the feel and sensual experience of the real items, and you can drive them to the grocery store without worrying that some clown is going to ruin your irreplaceable half-million dollar investment with a door ding, and without having to spend a thousand dollars or more on a detailing if you happen to get rained on. A lot of them are purchased by people who actually do own the real things, but love them and respect them so much that they couldn't bear seeing them come to harm.

Is this a reason to denigrate the replica cars? They are different. They serve a different purpose. They are not meant to replace or supplant the real thing. They are meant to be useable in a real-world scenario. I play two to three nights a week on small stages in small venues. I have no roadies. I schlep my own gear. I could not bear watching my prized M400 deteriorate by bits and pieces, night after night, just for the measly pay and lack of recognition that musicians get at the local level. The biggest sorrow would be that even if I did, probably nobody in the club but me would know I was practically playing a Stradivarius. For the average lout in the audience, it would just be a funny-looking white box that sounded like fiddles.

I'd be happy driving a replica Shelby Cobra. I'd be happy with something that gave me a lot of the Mellotron experience, but that I could move by myself with ease, was playable out of the box night after night with no maintenance, and could replace with minimal shedding of tears. Sex with a condom isn't quite the same, either, but people still do it. I see the Memotron as "safe Mellotroning" for the 21st century. I think that the Memotron is also going to inadvertently HELP the real ones, too. I've long wished that our Mellotron friends on either side of the Atlantic would either singly or together do a PROPER digital recreation just to make "that sound," or at least a reasonable approximation of it, accessible to everyone and more prominent in the music world again. Let's face it, if you want one that's done right, go to the people that do it right in the first place.

Yes, it may just bite into the sales of the real thing for a while. ; However, in the long run, I can't help but see it as one more step in the promotion, history, preservation, and development of this unique and marvelous instrument that we all love so much.

Let the flaming begin...

From: "jonesalley" <jonesalley@...>
To: "Mellotronists" <Mellotronists@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 10:17 PM
Subject: Re: [Mellotronists] Memotron, Shmemotron


> I'm astonished that so many ostensibly intelligent people erect straw men 
> to
> debate.  You could easily say the exact same things about the inherent
> limitations of the Mellotron, yet nobody here beats up on the lack of
> Mellotron programmability.  Folks, these people obviously and with much
> deliberation tried to faithfully replicate the functions and functionality
> of a real instrument.  Yet, that is exactly what is being held against the
> instrument, that they didn't turn it into just another sampler.  Is that
> really so difficult to understand?  Do the people that have derided the
> Memotron for its designed-in limitations gripe about three-thousand dollar
> digital pianos because they don't have 32-track sequencers, and 200 Meg of
> ethnic instrument samples?  It is supposed to be LIKE a Mellotron, not 
> like
> a Korg Oasys. As to price, $1995 for a limited-run, tightly-focused
> instrument that will only appeal to a small subset of keyboard players?
> Sounds sort of like a Mellotron, doesn't it?
>
>>      What a great idea that totaly missed it's mark.
>> No open architecture, again, no open architecture.
>> Price is stupidly high. Great looks, great size.
>
>
>
>
>
> Jimmy, I mean this in all courtesy, but you completely changed my argument
> to build your own straw man.  I specifically mentioned three incredibly 
> rare
> and incredibly expensive vintage automobiles, the big-block Shelby Cobra,
> the big-block Yenko Camaro, and the Porsche Speedster from the 1950's.
> There were not many of these made.  Vintage Mustangs are a dime a dozen.
> You can get a perfectly nice daily driver Mustang for ten thousand 
> dollars.
> These vehicles go a half-million at best.  Here's a closer example.  In
> 1970, Ferrari made a bit less than 1500 Daytona GTB models.  They were not
> common to begin with, and many of them have been lost to time.  To use one
> as an everyday car, you would have to be incredibly wealthy to buy it, and
> if something happened to it, you would have to shell out a lot of money to
> get another one.  A vehicle that is worth five hundred thousand to begin
> with and appreciates at a hundred thousand a year or better is an
> investment, and to park it in the Wal-Mart lot, one would have to be 
> either
> rich as Bill Gates, or an utter idiot.  Yes, you could drive it at special
> rallies occasionally, but taking it out on city streets would be a real
> anus-clencher.  Need I point out that there were 2500-odd Mellotrons
> produced, PERIOD?  We see, what, maybe fifteen per year on eBay?  They are
> not easy to replace, and I think it would be the height of disrespect for 
> my
> most prized possession to be wasted in smoky little bars.  As far as other
> bands that use them on stage, the examples given are either professional
> touring acts which have road crews, or bands that perform extremely
> occasionally and are willing and able to spend twenty hours of prep time 
> for
> a show.  When you go set up at 6PM to play at 9PM and go home after 
> tearing
> down at 2PM and do the same thing at another club the next day, proper
> Mellotron care and maintenance is problematical at best.
>
>> Well, as far as the car example, you can buy a vintage mustang and 
>> trailer
>> it to car shows, win awards, polish > it and then put it on the trailer
>> and drag it home......
>> Nope, I would rather enjoy mine and use it as a "daily driver".
>> It all boils down to preference.
>
>
>
>
> Bernie, your argument is specious in that the same exact things were said
> about digital pianos. You can't get the sensitivity out of a digital
> instrument, it doesn't have the complex overtones of the real thing, you
> can't get the kind of sound with a digital damper pedal that you can with 
> a
> real one, et cetera.  Today, digital pianos are common everywhere except 
> in
> hard-core classical concertizing, and today they are, through multi-strike
> samples, through physical modeling, through enormous sample size, starting
> to get frightfully close to the real thing.  At least, enough to where the
> decision of trying to truck a nine-foot grand around the world and keeping
> it properly maintained for performances is balanced out by a small(ish) 
> and
> reliable digital recreation of the real thing, that in rock and pop mixes 
> is
> virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.  Do you really think that
> some randomness of attack and playback fidelity is impossible to 
> reproduce?
> Do you think that polyphonic pressure keyboards are unable to change the
> sound on each key based upon the pressure on that key?  As far as 
> "feeling"
> like a Mellotron, which Mellotron?  It even would be entirely possible to
> place a rotating dummy capstan under the keybed of a digital instrument to
> impart that vague vibration that comes through the keys of a Mellotron.
> Don't get me wrong, I'm STILL NOT SAYING that it would be the same thing,
> but it would be so close as to justify using it onstage instead of risking
> one of the maybe 1500 real Mellotrons left in the world in tiny bars. 
> Also,
> once again, a multi-function sample keyboard, while it would indeed be
> useful, would not be as faithful a reproduction of a Mellotron.
>
>> With a sampler, you can press a key and sound comes out. You can even
>> play with the envelope and get different attacks, every note with
>> exactly the same attack. With a Mellotron, you can press a key in many
>> different ways and change the attack. You can also change the sound by
>> changing the pressure on the key while a note is playing. It isn't
>> just the sound, it's the feel. There's no way a sampler can feel like
>> a Mellotron, so there's no way you can put the same feeling into the
>> music you're playing.
>
>> On the other hand, Mellotrons are expensive and not everyone can
>> afford one. But a multi-function sample keyboard loaded with decent
>> Tron samples would be more useful than the Memotron, which can do only
>> one thing; and it wouldn't necessarily be more expensive.
>
>
>
>
> And finally, David.  I hope your post was not intended to be as
> condescending as it seemed.  I'm glad you have lots of toys.  Most real
> Mellotron owners seem to also have a lot of toys.  My Mellotron is one of
> the nineteen keyboards in my collection, which also includes some primo
> modern toys and some scarce old analog toys. I started playing piano
> forty-eight years ago, started programming synths thirty-five years ago, 
> and
> I am well aware of the capabilities of modern instruments.  You want to 
> talk
> functional, versatile, and reliable?  My sole stage keyboard for about 
> eight
> years has been one tiny nine-and-a-half pound Korg X5D loaded only with my
> own custom programs, including painstaking Mellotron replications that are
> frightfully authentic, even to 8-second cutoff, randomness of attack, and
> tape rewind snick.  My entire stage rig is the X5D, a Presonus MP-20 that
> serves as mixer and direct box, a pair of Samson XP-200 powered monitors, 
> a
> tall Quik-Lok keyboard stand and a couple of Quik-Lok's small keyboard
> stands on which to elevate my speakers.  I can carry my rig in two trips, 
> by
> myself, and set it up in ten minutes.  As far as reliable goes, while the
> only problems I have ever had are mechanical ones like broken keys, my rig
> is small and inexpensive enough that I carry spares of everything to
> performances.  A meteor could obliterate my entire setup and I would 
> simply
> go out to the car and get the backup rig and be ready to play again in
> fifteen minutes.  Functional and versatile?  Rather than giving you a list
> of what I can do with it (which happens to include some of your own
> examples, like "(K)Nights in White Satin") I'll be happy to put my money
> where my mouth is and let you hear some cuts for yourself, with no 
> overdubs,
> no sequences, nothing other than what I make happen with my ten fingers:
>
> http://www.wichitabandscene.com/bio.asp?showBandName=Jon#music
> http://www.wichitabandscene.com/bio.asp?showBandName=ICT#music
>
> So, please grant me the credibility that I have earned as a player and a
> programmer and don't talk down to me.
>
>
>
>
> I still say the Memotron is a boon for people who want to have the 
> familiar
> set of controls, the familiar set of sounds, a taste of the Mellotron
> experience, but who don't want to risk their genuine Mellotron, and who
> don't think that a garden-variety sampler will provide the right
> multi-sensory experience.  And I still wish that our two groups of 
> Mellotron
> developers, restorers, preservers would have done this first, because, as
> neat a trick as I think this Memotron thing is, it would have likely been
> done a lot better by the guys that know it best.
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

-----Original Message-----
From: Mellotronists@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Mellotronists@yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of jonesalley
 




And finally, David.  I hope your post was not intended to be as 
condescending as it seemed.  I'm glad you have lots of toys.  Most real 
Mellotron owners seem to also have a lot of toys.  My Mellotron is one of 
the nineteen keyboards in my collection, which also includes some primo 
modern toys and some scarce old analog toys. I started playing piano 
forty-eight years ago, started programming synths thirty-five years ago, and

I am well aware of the capabilities of modern instruments.  You want to talk

functional, versatile, and reliable?  My sole stage keyboard for about eight

years has been one tiny nine-and-a-half pound Korg X5D loaded only with my 
own custom programs, including painstaking Mellotron replications that are 
frightfully authentic, even to 8-second cutoff, randomness of attack, and 
tape rewind snick.  My entire stage rig is the X5D, a Presonus MP-20 that 
serves as mixer and direct box, a pair of Samson XP-200 powered monitors, a 
tall Quik-Lok keyboard stand and a couple of Quik-Lok's small keyboard 
stands on which to elevate my speakers.  I can carry my rig in two trips, by

myself, and set it up in ten minutes.  As far as reliable goes, while the 
only problems I have ever had are mechanical ones like broken keys, my rig 
is small and inexpensive enough that I carry spares of everything to 
performances.  A meteor could obliterate my entire setup and I would simply 
go out to the car and get the backup rig and be ready to play again in 
fifteen minutes.  Functional and versatile?  Rather than giving you a list 
of what I can do with it (which happens to include some of your own 
examples, like "(K)Nights in White Satin") I'll be happy to put my money 
where my mouth is and let you hear some cuts for yourself, with no overdubs,

no sequences, nothing other than what I make happen with my ten fingers:

http://www.wichitabandscene.com/bio.asp?showBandName=Jon#music
http://www.wichitabandscene.com/bio.asp?showBandName=ICT#music

So, please grant me the credibility that I have earned as a player and a 
programmer and don't talk down to me.




I still say the Memotron is a boon for people who want to have the familiar 
set of controls, the familiar set of sounds, a taste of the Mellotron 
experience, but who don't want to risk their genuine Mellotron, and who 
don't think that a garden-variety sampler will provide the right 
multi-sensory experience.  And I still wish that our two groups of Mellotron

developers, restorers, preservers would have done this first, because, as 
neat a trick as I think this Memotron thing is, it would have likely been 
done a lot better by the guys that know it best.




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