Mellotron
The Mellotron is an electromechanical keyboard instrument that is considered the original analog form of the sampler . It works with 3/8 inch wide tapes with three tracks recorded on which individual tones are stored as recorded sounds of certain musical instruments such as violin or trumpet . Each key is assigned its own tape strip, which is played via a tape head when the key is pressed . When the button is released, the tape located in a row of tape cassettes is quickly pulled back into its original position by a spring.
Production history
In the early 1950s, the American Harry Chamberlin developed a keyboard instrument whose sound generation was based on tapes.
In England the brothers Leslie, Frank and Norman Bradley took over this revolutionary idea and founded the Streetly Electronics company , which in 1963 brought the first instrument called the Mellotron Mark I (35 keys, two manuals next to each other) onto the market.
In 1964 the Mark II followed with minor technical improvements. In 1965 an agreement was made with Harry Chamberlin that Streetly Electronics was not allowed to sell its Mellotrone on the North American market (USA, Canada). In return, Chamberlin limited itself to the US market. In 1968 came the M 300, a single-manual Mellotron with a range of 52 keys, and in 1970 the M 400 was the smallest and stage-compatible instrument with a range of just 35 keys. In 1976, Streetly Electronics entered into a business relationship with the US company Dallas Music to enable these mellotrons to be sold worldwide . Dallas Music had to file for bankruptcy the following year.
From 1977 Leslie Bradly had to sell his instruments under the name Novatron , as the product name Mellotron had also been sold and went into the bankruptcy estate. In 1988 Streetly Electronics also went bankrupt.
In 2009 the company resumed the maintenance and repair of old Mellotrons.
function
A Mellotron (or Novatron ) can play back sounds recorded on magnetic tape on a keyboard. Typical sounds supplied by the manufacturer on a ribbon frame were flute, violins, wind instruments and choirs. Sound recordings could also be made according to your own wishes.
There are three audio tracks next to each other on each strip of tape, which can be selected by moving the audio head. It is therefore possible to switch quickly between the three sounds while playing. In some models (Mk I, Mk II, M 300) each tape is also divided into six sections (= stations) that can be accessed by a motor. A total of 18 instruments (3 sounds × 6 stations) are available per band. The Mellotron Mk I as well as the Mk II even had two keyboards with 35 keys each, which could contain different sounds. They contained 1260 samples (two keyboards with 35 keys or tapes, six sections per tape with three samples each).
In order to ensure that the sound progression of a recording (i.e. from the start of the sound to the fade out) starts again exactly from the beginning with each press of the button, no endless loops were used as tapes (apart from a few exceptions from self-made devices and the Birotron ), but tape strips in a frame which, when the button was released, snapped back into their original position thanks to an ingenious spring and roller mechanism. A continuous tone was therefore not possible (a maximum of about eight seconds), but percussive sounds, wind instruments, pianos, guitars etc., i.e. the respective blowing, plucking and striking characteristics of the recorded instruments. With a special way of playing, the spiderwalk , in which one skilfully hiked from key to key (usually the octave) shortly before the tape reached the end, an apparently continuous tone could be simulated.
An important function was the pitch control (in the photo in the player's left hand), with which the capstan speed and thus the pitch could be varied. A clear example can be heard in the middle of King Crimson's "Epitaph" .
use
The Mellotron is still used for film scoring. For this purpose, noises, sound effects and background atmospheres compiled by the manufacturer were recorded on the three-track tapes.
By operating the keyboard accordingly, it is even possible to create very complex background noise in real time, which is very advantageous when synchronizing. Synchronization problems with the Mellotron are more or less normal because the centrifugal mass is much too small.
The Mellotron has a characteristic warm, mostly somewhat melancholy sound, which can be heard, for example, in the Beatles song Strawberry Fields Forever . It is a signature instrument of progressive rock of the 1970s. The best known users of the mellotron in this genre include King Crimson , who used the instrument on their albums and live from 1968 to 1974 , Genesis from 1970 to 1977 and Yes in the same period. Other notable examples of Mellotron use can be heard on the pieces Immediate Curtain (1972) by Matching Mole and Fauni Gena (1973) by Tangerine Dream . The latter used the Mellotron in almost all of their songs from the 1970s for the characteristic strings, choir and flute sounds, especially in the intro of the song Cherokee Lane (1977). Jean Michel Jarre used it on the album Oxygène . Otherwise, Pink Floyd , Earth & Fire , Elton John , Camel , Pavlov's Dog , Beggar's Opera , Moody Blues (e.g. in Nights in White Satin ), die Zombies , Caravan , Klaus Schulze , Barclay James Harvest , Roxy Music , Led Zeppelin (The Rain Song, No Quarter) , Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark and 10cc the Mellotron occasionally use them in their studio productions. In the early 1970s, keyboardist Eddie Jobson , known from U. K. and Roxy Music, prepared a Mellotron with sounds from a mini Moog synthesizer in order to achieve polyphonic sounds that were not yet possible with the technology of the time.
At the end of the 1970s, the standard sounds of the mellotron (strings, choir, wind instruments) were increasingly replaced by electronic imitations. Occasionally, the term Mellotron can be found on LP covers for instruments that are not instruments at all. Electronic string keyboards (e.g. ELKA Rhapsody , Hohner String-Melody and ARP Solina String Ensemble ) were typical for string-like arrangements .
In the 1980s, the Mellotron was largely replaced by electronic samplers and synthesizers . In the 1990s, digital samples of the Mellotron sounds were popular for techno productions. Nevertheless, the actual instrument was still used by some bands, such as Motorpsycho , heard on Timothy's Monster , the Smashing Pumpkins , especially on their 1995 album Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness , Monster Magnet on the 1995 album Dopes to Infinity , Porcupine Tree ( Mellotron Scratch , 2005), the Red Hot Chili Peppers ( Knock me down from the 1989 album Mother's Milk , Breaking the Girl and Sir Psycho Sexy on Blood Sugar Sex Magik from 1991, Californication on the album of the same name from 1999, Warm Tape on By the Way from 2001) and Opeth ( Damnation , 2003).
disadvantage
The use of the mellotron was associated with several disadvantages. The complicated mechanics , especially on the Mk I, Mk II and M 300 models, were prone to failure, while the smaller M 400 only had to be serviced occasionally (cleaning the tape head, tapes and mechanics). Because of the short bands, tones could be held for a maximum of eight seconds. A development from the late 1970s, the Birotron , attempted to circumvent this problem with the help of endless tapes ( 8-track cassettes ), but could not prevail. Most of the Mellotrone were hardly suitable for concerts because of their size and weight (Mk I and II 159 kg, M 300 113 kg, M 400 55 kg).
Another disadvantage was that the tapes were worn to varying degrees after a while, so that the tones that were used often sounded duller than those that were seldom used.
In addition, financial aspects spoke against the use of the Mellotron. It was very expensive to buy. The price of such a device was around a third of a standard single-family home at the end of the 1960s. It was only produced in very small numbers (approx. 2500 pieces). Bands of today (2014) almost never use the original Mellotron. They use digitized sound imitations, which are much cheaper and easier to obtain.
Model types
- Mark I - (1963) : two manuals next to each other, each with 35 keys, mahogany veneer, 55 pieces produced
- Mark II - (1964) : like Mark I, but with technical improvements, over 300 pieces produced
- FX Console - (1965) : like Mark II, but specially for sound effects, 60 pieces produced
- M 300 - (1968) : single manual, 52 keys, white, over 60 pieces produced
- M 400 - (1970) : single manual, 35 keys, white, over 1800 pieces produced, "the" stage mellotron
- M 400 FX - (1970) : like M 400, but specially for sound effects
- Mark V - (1975) : double manual M 400, 28 pieces produced
- Novatron 400 SM - (1977) : like M 400, only new name (see production history), white or black
- Novatron Mark V - (1977) : like Mellotron Mark V, only new name (see production history), 2 pieces produced ( Paul McCartney and Patrick Moraz )
- T 550 - (1981) : Flightcase version of the 400 SM, 3 pieces produced
- Mark VI (1999): Further Development
Alternatives
There are now various software emulations of the Mellotron that come very close to the sound of the originals (as VST plug-ins, such as M-Tron Pro, Mellowsound, Nanotron, Tapeworm, Redtron, SoniVox or a RackExtension for Reason called Re- Tron). The small Berlin company Manikin Electronics (Thorsten Feuerherdt & Markus Horn GbR) developed the Memotron in 2005/2006 as a hardware alternative without problems with spare parts and tape salad; In 2010 the Digital Mellotron was presented for the first time by Markus Resch. Outwardly, both are very similar to the original; Technically, the Memotron from Manikin is a preset sampler with CD-ROM drive, CompactFlash card storage, a stereo effects processor and MIDI . A large, carefully created sound library (of almost 50 Mellotrons) offers the complete Mellotron library and other related sounds in original quality.
The instrument manufacturer Clavia integrated the original Mellotron sounds (shortened and looped) with its Nord Wave synthesizer, released in 2007 , which can be downloaded from the Clavia website.
literature
- Siegfried Schmidt-Joos : Introduction. In: Siegfried Schmidt-Joos, Barry Graves : Rock-Lexikon. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1973, 2nd edition 1975, reprint 1978, ISBN 3-499-16177-X , p. 404.
Short film
- The Mellotron In Action (in English, the Mellotron demonstrated and explained September 4, 2018)
credentials
- ↑ by Stefan Albus, Florian Zwißler : Sound change with a screwdriver: the Mellotron. March 19, 2018, accessed on July 27, 2020 (German).
- ↑ Contact / Imprint. Manikin Electronics, accessed July 2020 .
- ↑ Interview: Manikin Electronic, Markus Horn and Thorsten Feuerherdt. In: AMAZONA.de. February 8, 2007, accessed July 27, 2020 .
- ↑ Markus Thiel: The Mellotron Story. April 15, 2020, accessed on July 27, 2020 (German).
