Subj : RE:Tommy Roe To : Stephen Jones From : David Cumming Date : Thu Nov 02 2000 03:43 am On 25 Oct 00 11:09:08 Stephen Jones and BRETT MCCOY were talking about SJ> BRETT MCCOY wrote in a message to MIKE ROSS: SJ> SJ> BM> I think it was Robert Fripp of King Crimson who got the slick idea BM> of putting other sounds onto BM> the Mellotron besides violin sounds, i.e., Frippertronics. SJ> SJ> Is the Mellotron a keyboard instrument? Also, is it related to the SJ> Theron (sp?) that they used to do weird sounds like in the movie "The SJ> Day The Earth Stood Still"? SJ> SJ> SJ> Stephen The Mellotron was a bastard son of the union between a piano and a tape recorder. When you pressed down a key it caused an internal rotor to cause a length of magnetic tape to pass a replay head. There was a length of tape associated with each key and different groups of sounds could be recorded at different positions along the lengths of tape. I seem to remember that switching 'banks' involved the device winding through the tapes to find the required sections. I doubt it was Robert Fripp that thought of recording other sounds on these devices. I remember spending six hours or so nearly thirty years ago untangling the tapes from one of these beasts that the BBC in Glasgow, Scotland, used to use for producing sound effects for radio productions. Once in a while it would get the tapes crossed and the results had to be seen to be believed. I remember that I sorted it by laying each and every tape out in long lengths on the floor of a sound studio and rewinding them all onto the rotor. I also seem to recall that the Melotron was thought of as pretty old technology even in those days. The sorts of sounds recorded on this device were doors shutting, train whistles, dogs barking etc. Lots of different effects that were used in radio plays. Regards, David Cumming 'The Pound is worth sixty-seven and a half pence' - Radio4, 02/04/'99 --- F.I.P.S./32 v0.96 Win95/NT [R] * Origin: Also davidcummings@cableinet.co.uk (2:258/69.56) .