mellotrons

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fabfour1257

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is anyone out there aware of, or familiar with any synthesizers (in a reasonable price range, not a $5,000.00 price tag like for a real mellotron) that play or get the same sound as a mellotron??? i've always loved that string sound that mike pinder of the moody blues got. or the flute sound on "stairway to heaven" or the best yet the flute sound that john lennon used on "strawberry field's forever". i've been to a web site for the company taht makes mellotrons and they're basically all priced @ around $5,00.00 any help would be greatly appreciated thanks!!
 
Ok, the first thing you have to understand is that a mellotron is basically a primitive sampler.

There is no such thing as a mellotron sound, because it depended on what you loaded into the tape rack in the thing, and you could record your own tapes
 
gotcha' !! then just going by what sounds i described, is there anything that you can think of that would work, or sound close?
 
I dont know of anything exactly....I remember trying to duplicate a mellotron choir sound once and just gave up. The thing is, even if you got the real thing, you wouldnt have those tapes. A really good analog might get close, maybe a waldof microwave...and a lot of programming
 
I'm fairly sure that the flute on Stairway is a real instrument (flute/recorder) not a mellotron.

But there are sampler collections out there with full sets of the real mellotron basic banks. There's also hooky WAV files out there, if you look for them, of the basic Flute, Brass, Choir, Strings sets, which you throw in a sampler.

The harder part is getting all the weirdness of the mechanics duplicated in a sampler. Stuff like not being able to repeat a note immediately (otherwise you get the squeak of the tape still returning, as the head catches it :) and not having an infinite amount of note to play with. Mostly people aren't going to notice that though!

Mike.
 
The M-Tron is really boss, and provides banks totally different from those that an original Mellotron offers...


Some of the Soundfonts from www.thesoundsite.net are perfectly useable, but for free, the MellowSound is great-

www.batsounds.com

No flute generator, but the strings and choir are quite acceptable


Peace
Chris
 
Roland XP80

I bought the "Keyboards of the 60s and 70s" expansion card for my XP80, in addition to a ton of Rhodes and Wurly patches it has about 15 really good sounding Mellotron patches. I think you can use the expansion boards on a few different Roland synths.
 
There is a patch on my Triton LE called Mellon Flute, and it does the Strawberry Fields sound pretty well. It doesnt have the hiss and tape flutter that a real mellotron has, but burried in a mix, it is perfect.
 
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