Mellotron Sounds library - best commented library ever!

[TheAncientOne]

The Mellotron 2008 Sound LIbrary

The comments had me laughing out loud:

Examples

"This is a special combined sound made up for Mike Dickson, comprising (approximately) 40% viola and 60% M300A strings. The overall sound is extremely melancholy and well suited to the miserable sort of music that Mellotronists the world over like listening to, usually because their prog-rock fixations prevent them from getting any Hot Girl Action. "

"Adrian had all the windows in the Empire State Building removed and 12" speakers fitted. He then set up a microphone in LA and let rip."

"It has often been said that a Mellotron is one of the few instruments where you can get away with playing only one note and having it sound impressive. This is never more easily demonstrated than by the sound of the string section - as the entire career of a nameless German Electro-Ambient band playing hours of E-minor appears to show."

There's a lot more - and samples.

[Goblinz]

Marimba

Big wooden thing. You hit it with other things. It goes bonk. Like a xylophone whose glands have gone on the rampage. Bizarrely, this sound only goes down to the lowest C on the Mellotron keyboard, so the remaining five notes are taken up with various gongs and cymbals being bashed and crashed. We are sure that this sounded like a great idea at the time.

:D

And now I know what a Mellotron is !

[nebula]

Nice find!  Too funny -

Sad Strings

Imagine you've just heard that your entire family has been killed in a Bizarre Toileting Accident, that your puppy had just been caught in a food processor, that Yamaha were bringing out the DX7 again and that Michael Bolton was planning another tour. How sad would this make you feel?

Probably sad enough to want to listen this miserable new sound. The Sad Strings - also known as The Strings Of Doom - came from a 1/4" master we found that was unedited. It had a lot of poor starts and finishes, poor middle bits, poor pitching, duff players, cats howling, windbreaking and car accidents, so it had to be coaxed into life.

What has emerged is a very atmospheric sound that has great sonority when played sympathetically, i.e not block chording like all the useless Bontempi Organ players tend to do when confronted with a Mellotron.

Click here to hear a sample of this sound

Angry Strings

Now imagine you've just heard that Michael Bolton is moving in next door to you. How angry would this make you feel?

Another new one from Fritz Doddy, this features doubled 'cello on the low end G1 to D2 with the remaining notes being two violins in unison. Everything was played fff and con fuego.

The 'cello was performed by Mary Wooten and violins by Sandra Park and Lisa Kim.

Click here to hear a sample of this sound

[nILS]

Hehe, some of the comments are incredibly funny :-)

[Tanstaafl]

I've been working on a DIY Mellotron since the 70's...... grrrrrrr

[Tanstaafl]

BTW, we survived IKE !!! no power or internet for 5 weeks, thank you very much.... I can't believe this in Houston!!

anyway, nice to be back

c ya

[TheAncientOne]

I've been working on a DIY Mellotron since the 70's...... grrrrrrr

I did a few experiments in that line too. Including a stack of old BSR 8 track players, fitted with NAB jingle cartridges. I keep looking for a clearence batch of Walkmen, preferably the auto reverse kind.

Also did an EPROM based player, using u-law compression on 8 bits, 1 EPROM and an  R-2R (sort of) ladder per 'note'. 36 pieces of veroboard..... and I haven't a clue what happened to it. Changed the, (short), samples by changing the loop base address. had, (I think), a pair of start 'instruction' start bytes to determine single shot or loop length. I wish I'd been able to use PALs and GALs for that - might be worth doing again that way, though I'd have a load bus and use Flash RAM these days. Harest bit then was agetting a good high speed sample clock. Definitely no glide or note bending available.

Perhaps a modern version using something like SwinSID technology might be worth doing, could do a scanned keyboard and anote allocator to get away with less generators if need be, but I like the  'one per note' purity, somehow.

My conclusion from all of them was that the hardware is not as hard as building the sample set.

[stryd_one]

I've been working on a DIY Mellotron since the 70's...... grrrrrrr

I thought I was the King of Vapor around here.... I have been dethroned! :D

Welcome back to civilisation Tanstaafl ;)

[Tanstaafl]

ok, sherman set the wayback.....

I messed with walkmen clones,

old 8-track hardware.... been there done that... it's REDICULOUSLY  expensive.... 

The Mellotron dudes got it correct the first time... a standard capstan that spins everything at the same rate.. but the wear and tear...

then I bought my first Kurzweil in a pawn shop... old K2000S maxed out the RAM and OS. About 500 USD.

..... that's kinda when I gave up on the tape thing....  it has tickled my fancy a few times since then... but I do find it to be much more satisfying to just spring for the pro samples... and put em in the K2000.

my 2cents

[Tanstaafl]

p.s.

Thanx Stryde!!!!