http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/11/24/early-60s-mellotron.html
Received from Giovani in the UK
Bebop

A guy who was an executive for Mellotron came to work at Square D in the early 90's. I worked with him. He said that they were still in business at the time, supporting about 10 instruments owned by Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder and the like. He said in the mid 80's, a professional level instrument was in the neighborhood of $250,000.00 plus.

That's a lot, but a Mac desktop publishing system was about $80,000.00 at the time, and a Betacam used for TV was over $80,000.00. A basic AVID editing system was over $50,000.00 in 2000, and that price had been drastically reduced a few years before. Now, if you spend more than $4500.00 for a Mac publishing system, you've spent too much, and the current model has 100's of times the memory and vastly improved features. Betacams are replaced by smaller broadcast quality digital units in the $4000.00 range, and with the right amount of computer memory, you can duplicate what you did on an AVID for a few thousand dollars.

The secret to great graphics, photography, music or films (digital imagery)
is the OPERATOR, of course....the photographer, videographer, editor and electronic musician. That's what separates the "men from the boys". (figure of speech, ladies-no slight intended).


Russ

[This message has been edited by captain Russ (edited 11-25-2008).]

Bebop...nice find very interesting & lots of memories....didnt the beatles use on in "Strawberry Fields Forever"?

Happy Thanks Giving

Great Vid!

(Re the Beatles) I assumed you WERE going to link to that Video of Paul demoing one to an interested interviewer, as that is the ONLY video I've ever seen of a Mellotron being played (he did snatches from Strawberry Fields if I remember correctly)

Oh, and in the comments below (in the link) I agree with the 4th poster:

"I want every video I see on the web from now on to end with the final frame from this."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bVCR1xfyno
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylI0S1v9B3k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywg-PdeGVL0&feature=related

Wow. Is there any other audio or video of a melatron being used as an arranger? I never knew that was done.

Do a google search on mellotron they are out there for sure.

Happy Holiday

And to think, the melotron was using audio loops for "all" the parts. Now we're getting excited about the audya using audio loops for "some" of the parts. Rather ironic.

I know, the audya is trying to do it in every key, at any tempo, with several styles, but still, amazing that it's taken 40+ years to even begin to figure out a way to use audio loops in styles, when the melotron was doing it ages ago.

[This message has been edited by FAEbGBD (edited 11-27-2008).]

I remember playing a Mellatron many years ago. It required a very different sort of playing technique when sustaining chords to occasionally lift fingers to rewind the tape when it ran to the end. These tapes weren't loops that looped around. They simply ran to the end and stopped until the key was released and they rewound back to the start so they could be started again.


[This message has been edited by Nigel (edited 11-27-2008).]