Some questions to Mellotron's owners / players

[Garubi]

First of all a little bit of context information:

I'm on the way to "pack" the ubiquitous Mellotron samples made by Leisureland in a Decent Sampler preset.

(Decent Sampler is a lightweight VST samples player with a nice and easy scripting language that allows to add controls, knobs and switches to the user interface to improve expressiveness of the instrument).

 

I never had a chance to put my hands on real Mellotron so I'm asking you some "first-hand" information about its controls, so when I'll put them on the VST user interface they will hopefully make some sense 😄

- what is the pitch knob control range?  

- How do you typically use it? As a "set and forget" tuning control or as a real-time control like the pitch bender we use on the modern keyboards?

- I read on the Mellotron's wikipedia page that "Pressing a key harder allows the head to come into contact under greater pressure, to the extent that the Mellotron responds to aftertouch.". Is it real? Do you use this technique? what is the perceived audio results? a pitch down? a different harmonic amount? Can you link to an audible example?

 

Sorry for this really naive questions, and thank you in advance for your help 😊

[HammondDave]

I own three Mellotrons and for many years I sold samples of the many sounds that my Trons create. To answer your questions...

 

Aftertouch on a Mellotron is tricky as you are actually adding pressure to the tape. I do not use this technique as these machines are notorious for problems.  

 

The pitch range for the pitch control is a minor third up and down. (3 half steps). This control is used for pitch correction and effect (think "Legend of the Mind" by the Moody Blues. Watch this video for an example of this technique.)

 

 

 

[Garubi]

Thank you!!

 

[SamuelBLupowitz]

[mate stubb]

The action on a Mellotron feels a lot like pressing on wet Play-Doh. 

[Baldwin Funster]

No one has mentioned that the real mellotron experience includes only having 8 seconds of note time for each loop before the note stops and must rewind.

[David Emm]

I'm glad I got to play a real Mellotron briefly, as the experience told me all I needed to know. I became even more wowed by anyone who took the darned things on tour after that. 

 

It depends on how much 'tron you need. Some prefer the digital hardware options, but I often recommend G-Force's M-Tron Pro. The library is exhaustive, but more to your points, you can set the pitch-bend ranges at will, per patch. That becomes a non-issue. Filter & velocity aftertouch are present and the plug comes with synth-like amp and filter ADSRs, so you can do plenty of shaping to taste. I'm with mate on the feel of the real deal. It comes across like an instrument that's likely to 'splode at any moment, which it often did. 💥    

 

Decent Sampler seems likely to provide you with an assignable script for aftertouch. I don't know where you're getting your Mellotron food, but if you just want the basic classic sounds, they can be had pretty easily. Arturia's Mellotron V and IK Multimedia's Sampletron are other options, but IMO, M-Tron does it best.  

[Finale]

14 hours ago, Garubi said:

- How do you typically use it? As a "set and forget" tuning control or as a real-time control like the pitch bender we use on the modern keyboards?

- I read on the Mellotron's wikipedia page that "Pressing a key harder allows the head to come into contact under greater pressure, to the extent that the Mellotron responds to aftertouch.". Is it real? Do you use this technique? what is the perceived audio results? a pitch down? a different harmonic amount? 😊

I owned a M400S for a number of years. Real Mellotrons were fragile and capricious machines. I never used the pitch control as a pitch wheel and I'm glad I was never in a Moody Blues tribute band because again you don't want to mess with a Mellotron in a live situation. Also, pressing harder on the keys did exactly what you mention, but it was not recommended at all, as you shortened the life of the tapes even more. They could sound quite metallic rather quickly as they wore.

 

One problem with many Mellotron sample libraries is that they don't respect the peculiar intonation/temperament of the individual tapes, especially when it comes to strings. The original Mellotron strings were recorded by pro orchestra players isolated in a studio environment, which implies conventional string player technique and thus temperament linked to Pythagorean intonation. This also explains why they originally decided that the Mellotron keyboard lowest key would be a G (as on the violin) and why the sharps and flats differ in various cent amounts from their natural note frequencies. Only with that you can get (what I refer to as) the original Mellotron "ghostly soul". For example, using ET (equal temp) for Mellotron sounds totally kills this and you get a sterile imitative attempt. One honorary mention is that Kurzweil had it right back then with their PC1/PC2 synths series in what I think was called their Vintage Keys sound block option.

[mate stubb]

These days I use a Mellotron Micro. It sampled every tape separately and so fortunately preserves the original temperament.

[Garubi]

Thank you all for your invaluable information!