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RE: Time Lag Accumulator




--- goddard.duncan@mtvne.com wrote:
> true, tim, but you'd be surprised (most players
> encountering the mellotron for the first time are)
> just how long 8 seconds is in the context of most
> music.

I think my experience with the mellotron is coloured
by the fact that the only one I've ever used wasn't in
the best condition and the tapes were a lot shorter
than they are supposed to be! I used to record at Fort
Apache in Cambridge, MA, and they have two 'trons that
they purchased when the Broadway show Beatlemania
closed. They use one of the 'trons as a parts supply
for the other one. (Owners of the Chain Tape
Collective's CD 'Seventy-Five Seconds'
<http://www.music.columbia.edu/%7Ececenter/mhl21/ct/ct_75/ct_75.html>
have a photo of me playing the working one, replete
with a bottle of Rolling Rock perched above the
keyboard...)
Actually, the state of disrepair that thing was in
really did add to the weirdness of its sound in a very
good way!

> or, of course, you could just buy a sampler.... :-)

Yeah, these days when I want a Mellotron sound, I use
Soundfonts... 

> rick wakeman got a bloke called dave biro to help
> him with a keyboard design that used NAB carts
> instead of the mellotron's 3/8" tapes.

This is an excerpt from an interview with Steve Howe
in which he describes a practical joke he played on
Wakeman and his Birotron:
 "It was a difficult album to make personality-wise.
It
was the album where we took Rick's Birotron and he
went to the loo while he was doing some overdubs, and
while he was in the loo we took out all his
eight-track cassettes [from the Birotron] and we put
mine in: quadraphonic Seals and Crofts and all these
old eight track tapes. So he came back and he said, OK
let's carry on; when he pressed the keys he went,
what the hell is this? It was like, [sings] 'We may
never pass this--We may never pass this--We may never
pass this--'. If only he had laughed though, but he
got quite cross!"

Wakeman claims to have, out of frustration with the
Birotron, taken every one of them that he owned out
into a field, doused them with petrol and torched the
lot. I'm not sure how many units escaped the bonfire,
but I'd imagine that'd make 'em pretty rare!

-t-

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