thought bout this topic for a while.
Could we make a list of Hardware Emulations modeled on legendary instruments:
I'll set this off:
Mellotron -->> GForce - M-Tron/Pro ~ 2 Gb
A Mellotron is a tape replay keyboard. This means that under every key is a length of magnetic tape that is moved past a playback head whenever that key is pressed. Each piece of tape has a sound (for example, a sustained flute note) whose pitch corresponds with the keyboard note that it is under. After a key has been pressed and then released, the tape is pulled quickly back to its starting position by a spring. Since each sound is produced by a linear piece of tape rather than an endless loop, the sound can faithfully reproduce the attack phase and then the decay phase of a percussive instrument such as a piano.
While the designer's goal was probably to make it sound exactly like the original instrument that was recorded, the quality of a Mellotron's sound is, perhaps accidentally, distinctly its own. It has been called a 'mutant organ' and its sound is often described as moody and warm. It gives a song a haunting, lonely quality.
The M-Tron captures all of the character of the original instrument by sampling every note of every key and adhering to the eight second limit of each note The principle of the Mellotron was simple - take a 35 note keyboard and have a piece of tape for each note containing real recordings of real players. In this way it was arguably
the world's first sampler, with recordings varying from single notes (as in the Flutes sound used on the legendary Strawberry Fields Forever) or entire musical motifs (as in The Beatles' Bungalow Bill)
This instrument was manufactured in various guises between 1963 and 1986 and was used by artists including The Beatles, The Moody Blues' Mike Pinder, Black Sabbath, Rick Wakeman and Genesis' Tony Banks. The instrument faded into semi-obscurity during the 80's and early 90's, but due, in part, to its evocative and unique nostalgic sound, it was rediscovered and used by artists including Oasis, Radiohead, Kasabian and countless others.
nice 1
