Ah, the
Mellotron! It became the love of my life too, also having been introduced
to it by Court of the Crimson King and at about the same time by the Moody
Blues. It just has a sound like nothing else. Captain Beefheart
(also a fan) described it as having , "a merthiolate sound", and that really
does describe it - strangely astringent. I was a bass and guitar player
with seriously limited keyboard skills and a budget that didn't come anywhere
near affording one so I just settled for listening until softsynths came along,
when I picked up a program called M-Tron which is a great Mellotron emulation
that I've had tons of fun with. Unfortunately though, last winter I wound
up with a new PC with Windows 7 64 bit and I wasn't able to get M-Tron to
successfully install on it, though I should really go on the web again and see
if there's some kind of work around. Failing that, though, there is a new
and improved version, and at this point I might just spring for it.
