Mellotron

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Image:Mellotron.jpg
An early double-manual, woodgrain Mellotron. Later Mellotrons came in a white case and were simplified for ease of use by rock musicians; it was these Mellotrons that became an iconic symbol of 60s and 70s progressive rock.

The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s.

The Mellotron supervenes the Chamberlin, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard. The heart of the instrument is a bank of magnetic audio tapes (which are parallel linear, not looped as has sometimes been reported or presumed). Each tape has approximately eight seconds of playing time. Playback heads (underneath each key) enable the playing of pre-recorded sounds.

The earlier MKI and MKII models contained two side-by-side keyboards: On the right keyboard were 18 selectable "lead/instrument" sounds (such as strings, flutes, and brass instruments). The left keyboard played pre-recorded musical rhythm tracks (in various styles).

The tape banks for the later, lighter-weight M400 models contain only 3 selectable sounds such as strings, cello, and the famous eight-voice choir. The sound on each individual tape piece was recorded at the pitch of the key to which it was assigned. To make up for the fewer sounds available, the M400 tapes came in a removable frame, which allowed for relatively quick changes to new racks of sounds.

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[edit] History

Although tape samplers had been explored in research studios (e.g., Hugh LeCaine's 1955 keyboard-controlled "Special Purpose Tape Recorder", which he used when recording his classic "Dripsody"), the first commercially available keyboard-driven tape instruments were built and sold by California-based Harry Chamberlin from 1948 through the 1970s.

Things really took off, however, when Chamberlin's sales agent, Bill Fransen, brought two of Chamberlin's instruments to England in 1962 to search for someone who could manufacture 70 matching tape heads for future Chamberlins. Initially, Harry Chamberlin was not happy with the fact that someone overseas was basically "copying" his idea, and that one of his own people (Bill Fransen) was the reason for this. He eventually founded a UK company that was skilled enough to develop the idea further and a deal was struck with Bill and Lesley Bradley of tape recorder company Bradmatic Ltd. This resulted in the formation of a subsidiary company named Mellotronics, which produced the first Mellotrons in Aston, Birmingham, England. Bradmatic later took on the name Streetly Electronics. Many years later, following financial and trademark troubles, the Mellotron name became unavailable and later instruments were sold under the name Novatron. A small number of the instruments were assembled and sold by EMI under license.

Through the late 1970s, the Mellotron had a major impact on rock music, particularly the 35 note (G-F) model M400. The M400 version was released in 1970 and sold over 1800 units, becoming a trademark sound of the era's progressive bands. The novel characteristics of the instrument attracted a number of celebrities, and among the early Mellotron owners were Princess Margaret, Peter Sellers, King Hussein of Jordan and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.[citation needed]

Mellotrons were normally pre-loaded with string instrument and orchestral sounds, although the tape bank could be removed with relative ease by the owner and loaded with banks containing different sounds including percussion loops, sound effects, or synthesizer-generated sounds, to generate polyphonic electronically generated sounds in the days before polyphonic synthesizers.

Image:Mellotron1.jpg
Beneath every key is a disengaged tape head and roller.
Image:Mellotron2.jpg
Depressed key engages tape head and roller.

The unique sound of the Mellotron is produced by a combination of characteristics: Among these are tape replay artifacts such as wow and flutter, the result being that each time a note is played, it is slightly different from the previous time it was played (a bit like a conventional instrument). The notes also interact with each other so that chords or even just pairs of notes have an extremely powerful sound.

Another factor in the strangely haunting quality of the Mellotron's most frequently-heard sounds is that the individual notes were recorded in isolation. For a musician accustomed to playing in an orchestral setting, this was unusual, and meant that he/she had nothing against which to intonate. Thus, the temperament of the Mellotron is always somewhat questionable when it is used in the context of other instruments. Perhaps for this reason, and perhaps also to allow easy transposition of the instrument's limited range, the pitch control is placed closest to the keyboard on the M400 model.

This temperament issue has led to the Mellotron being regarded, rather unfairly, as a difficult instrument to tune. There certainly could be mechanical problems that would also contribute to this. The original varispeed servo design was poor, for instance, but later improved dramatically. The tapes would stick inside their frames and refuse to rewind if the frame became distorted due to careless handling of the machine. Properly maintained though, the machines behave a lot better than their reputation suggests.

Although they enabled many bands to perform string, brass and choir arrangements, which had been previously impossible to recreate live, Mellotrons were not without their disadvantages. Above all, they were very expensive. They sold for £1,000 in the mid-1960s, and the official Mellotron site gives the 1973 list price as US $5200. Like the Hammond organ, they were a roadie's nightmare: heavy, bulky and fragile. After years of touring with Mellotrons, Robert Fripp formulated a rule: "Tuning a mellotron doesn't." The tape banks were also notoriously prone to breakages & jams and those groups who could afford to (like Yes) typically took two Mellotrons on tour to cope with the inevitable breakdowns.

The original Mellotrons (MkI/MkII) were not intended to be portable (they often become misaligned when jostled even lightly), but later models such as the M300, M400 and MkV were designed for portability. All models, when installed permanently in a studio, provided a very realistic effect. An example of this can be found on Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album. Despite these shortcomings, Mellotrons were prized for their unique sound, and they helped pave the way for the later sampler.

In the 1990s, a Calgary-based company began producing new Mellotrons. These new MkVI Mellotrons were similar to the M400, with some modifications. The company also released sample discs featuring wav files of each individual note sampled from an original Mellotron. These files, when played using a sampler, enable keyboardists to recreate the sound of the original Mellotrons using cheaper and more reliable modern keyboards. Bands such as Counting Crows and The Musical Box have toured using these sampled Mellotrons to avoid the inconvenience of transporting and maintaining original Mellotrons on the road.

[edit] The Mellotron in popular music

British multi-instrumentalist Graham Bond may have been the first "rock" musician to record with a Mellotron, beginning in 1965. A year later, The Beatles used it prominently on their groundbreaking single "Strawberry Fields Forever" (recorded November-December 1966). However, it was Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues who brought the Mellotron to the forefront of popular music with the 1967 album Days of Future Passed in songs including "Nights in White Satin" and "Tuesday Afternoon". Pinder, who worked for Mellotron for 18 months before joining The Moody Blues, claims to have suggested The Beatles should use a Mellotron, although it is almost certain they knew of them from studio work at IBC before. Pinder made regular use of the instrument on The Moody Blues' studio albums from 1967 through 1971. Their 1972 album Seventh Sojourn employed the Mellotron's predecessor, the Chamberlin.

The Mellotron was also used by The Zombies ("Changes"), Donovan ("Celeste", "Breezes of Patchule"), Manfred Mann (several Mike D'abo-era recordings, including "So Long Dad" and "Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James"), Lynyrd Skynyrd ("Tuesday's Gone"), The Rolling Stones ("2000 Light Years from Home"), The Bee Gees ("World", "Every Christian Lion-Hearted Man Will Show You"), Traffic ("House for Everyone", "Hole In My Shoe"), Pink Floyd ("A Saucerful of Secrets", "Julia Dream", "Sysyphus" and "Atom Heart Mother"), Procol Harum ("Magdalene (My Regal Zonophone)", "A Whiter Shade of Pale"), The Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow, The Left Banke's "Myrah", Marvin Gaye's Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology), Big Star ("Kangaroo", played by producer Jim Dickinson) and others during the psychedelic era. The Kinks featured the instrument prominently in their recordings between 1967 and 1969, most obviously on 1968's "Phenomenal Cat," from The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society.


The Mellotron was widely used to provide backing keyboard accompaniment by many of the progressive rock groups of the 1970s and, alongside the venerable Hammond organ, it was crucial to shaping the sound of the genre. It has been featured on the following albums (not an exhaustive list): Once Again by Barclay James Harvest, Grave New World by Strawbs, In the Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson, Space Oddity, Hunky Dory, and Diamond Dogs by David Bowie, 2112 by Rush, I Robot by The Alan Parsons Project, Fragile, Close to the Edge, and Tales From Topographic Oceans by Yes, and Nursery Cryme, Genesis Live, Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, A Trick of the Tail, Wind & Wuthering, Seconds Out and ...And Then There Were Three... by Genesis.

Led Zeppelin used a Mellotron to recreate the recorder arrangement for live performances of "Stairway to Heaven", and is featured prominently on "The Rain Song" from Houses of the Holy. It was also used extensively by pioneering German electronic band Tangerine Dream through their prime, including solo work by Edgar Froese. The Tangerine Dream albums Phaedra, Rubycon, Ricochet, and Encore as well as Froese's Epsilon in Malaysian Pale provide excellent examples of Mellotron playing. Another example of the Mellotron's unique sounds can be heard on Immediate Curtain, played by former Soft Machine-percussionist Robert Wyatt on the first album of his second band Matching Mole. The Pillory, recorded in 1977 by American musician & composer Jasun Martz, is often considered the "Holy Grail" of Mellotron releases. ref: * [1]

The advent of cheaper and more reliable polysynths and preset 'string machines' saw the Mellotron's popularity wane by the end of the 1970s. Following the impact of punk, the Mellotron tended to be viewed as a relic of a pompous era. By 1980, Switzerland's progressive rock band Flame Dream used the Mellotron on all 6 of their Vertigo, Phonogram albums; and its status had diminished to the extent that Captain Beefheart was able to reappropriate it almost as an archaic "found instrument". One of the few UK post-punk bands to utilise its sounds were Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, who featured it heavily on their platinum-selling Architecture & Morality album (1981).

The Mellotron experienced a revival of sorts in the 1990s. A plethora of bands began using the instrument, including You Am I, Pulp, Marillion, The Smashing Pumpkins, Counting Crows, Oasis, Barenaked Ladies, Sheryl Crow, Incubus, Tori Amos, Spock's Beard, Lenny Kravitz, The Flower Kings, Nine Inch Nails, Muse, Pearl Jam, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Faith No More, Grandaddy, Tom Waits, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Charlatans, Paul Weller, Radiohead, John Medeski, Porcupine Tree, Air, Opeth, Enslaved, No-Man, Waterclime, and a revived "double-trio" version of King Crimson. In 1989/90, R.E.M. recorded the prevalent and mysterious-sounding cello parts of "Losing My Religion" using a Mellotron.

On Porcupine Tree's 2005 album Deadwing, track 6 is titled "Mellotron Scratch" and includes lyrics about the sound of a Mellotron causing a woman to cry. Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson prominently used the Mellotron's haunting choral sounds on No-Man's 2003 album Together We're Stranger. In 2006, Sloan featured the Mellotron's flute sound prominently on "Fading Into Obscurity" and "You Know What It's About." The flute sound was also used extensively on Eels' 2005 album Blinking Lights and Other Revelations. And most recently, the Mellotron can be sparingly heard on songs from the Canadian rock band Rush's 2007 release, Snakes & Arrows (the Mellotron has made an appearance on one of their earlier albums, as mentioned above) as well as British artist PJ Harvey's 2007 release, White Chalk.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

ca:Mellotron de:Mellotron es:Melotrón fr:Mellotron is:Mellotron it:Mellotron he:מלוטרון nl:Mellotron ja:メロトロン no:Mellotron pl:Melotron pt:Mellotron ru:Меллотрон fi:Mellotron sv:Mellotron uk:Мелотрон

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