Brian Kehew demonstrates the Mellotron at the Museum of Making Music screening of "Mellodrama: The Mellotron Movie" in September 2010 www.mellotronmovie.com
Great demo. I have to quibble with just one thing Brian says, however, regarding the use of Mellotron on The Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed. The first track -- "The Day Begins" -- is the real orchestra and not the Mellotron. The first appearance of the Mellotron is about 40 seconds into the first vocal song, "Dawn is a Feeling". It's a fairly noticeable shift from one to the other.
The Mellotron was banned. by the Musician's Union in the UK in the 70s, which created a difficult situation for many musicians. They suggested that using the instrument (and recordings on Tape) put other musicians out of work
For sure Roger .the moodies had prob from the unions musicians ,these days leads by. ..............the crappy Edgar Broughton who in case didn't brought something in UK 's music !!! So this happened in 68/ 69 i thinck Mike Pinder and Ray Thomas (THE founders of MB) went to the " musicians unions" to show that Mike didn't took off work Ray ,notably in " niws" or " legend of a mind " & others songs i guess!!! After that many bands used the trons but Edgar Broughton didn't brought any important masterpiece ,or opus to the planet's music!!!!
@@alaincelos476 My band (Liverpool Express) used the Mellotron on many songs, and I remember a Union guy coming over to me as we were doing a TV show in London and telling me to "get that thing off the stage" - one of our songs had two flute notes on the song and so we offered to give him fees for two session guys. He took the money and left!
The most annoying negative aspect of the Mellotron M400 and the Mellotron Mark ii is the key thump due to the key pressure to needed to make the tape heads connect to the keyboard keys. The Mellotron M4000D can be programed to sound like the previous Mellotron models while taking advantage of the key playing silence. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-r4GGYa-7fU8.html
You misunderstood what he was saying.what he said was you can change the tap rack your self with a another rack with different sounds.There's two screws holding the rack in place,remove the screws and the rack lifts out,then install the new rack and install the screws.
The point being, it was quick enough that you could change sound palette during a gig. This was pretty cool back in the day, before electronic organs, presets, samplers. If you wanted to switch from a Hammond Organ to a Fender Rhodes, you had to bring both and set them both up on a stage, and they were massive.
Yikes ... I am crinching, the tunes played sound nothing like the originals ... i am not convinced that this is a good ad fopr the classic instrument ... Sorry, just my opions
If you mean, his renditions don't exactly match the recordings from the 60s and 70s that shouldn't come as a surprise. For starters he's simply offering a quick demo, not a professional studio performance. Also, between him and those recordings is the filter of producers, mixers, engineers, tape ops, disc cutters, amplifiers, effects boxes, etc., all of which have their own impact on the original performance. Also his tape rack isn't the exact same one used on those recordings and who knows what the effects of time had on that!
