An Introduction to the Mellotron Project

This project is all about making the sound of the Mellotron accessible to all of you EX users out there. As well as providing a batch of sounds that capture the spirit of the Mellotron, we thought it would also be interesting and informative to provide some background information on what makes the Mellotron so special. So we’ll start by giving you an introduction that places the Mellotron within the roadmap of the music technology that makes up the EX series of synthesisers. We’ll then take you into a description of how the Mellotron makes its noises, after which you’ll be amazed that it ever worked reliably enough for people to make a living out of them. Finally we’ll give you a potted history of the Mellotron, which has as many twists and turns as the usual story behind many a rock band! We hope you’ll take the time to read these words, as we believe that they’ll help you to appreciate the amazing sounds that the Mellotron created, and which you can now have embodied within your EX synthesiser.

The Road Map of Synthesis Technology (from an EX perspective)
As I write this introduction to the EX Mellotron project, I am listening to an album by Arena called "Immortal", which was recorded and released this year (2000), and it features the sound of a truly wonderful, if somewhat archaic, instrument called the Mellotron. In some ways that is strange, because compared to the awesome technology we have available today, we are talking about an instrument which was and still is a mechanical nightmare, and which in its day was loved for its sound by some, seen as a means to an end by others, and generally despised by all for its lack of portability and unreliability.

To understand what makes the Mellotron so special and to set the scene of its amazing story, lets look at the Yamaha EX family of synthesisers which (I believe) represents the pinnacle of many synthesis technologies at the start of our new millennium, and work our way back along the technological roadmap of synthesis technology to find the Mellotron’s place in the grand order of things.

If you think about it, the EX is itself a culmination of several decades worth of technological innovation. The only major synthesis technologies of note (sic) left out of the EX are FM synthesis and additive synthesis, but you can’t have everything! FDSP synthesis itself is the only technology that has only ever been seen on the EX, and so far it has yet to reappear on any other synth (to me that alone will always make the EX special). Both analogue and physical modelling technologies are products that became available to the masses in the nineties with the AN1X and the VL70m instruments. Moving swiftly to the EX’s AWM engine, the marrying of sample playback to a traditional synthesiser sound chain was first seen in the mid-eighties on the Emulator-II. In the same era, the Roland D50 was the first synth to replace oscillators with short sample loops, again with a conventional synth processing chain tagged on the back.

Digital sampling itself places us in the technological road map at the back end of the seventies, when most of us could only dream about machines such as the Fairlight. And of course, analog synthesis was first available at the tail end of the sixties in those hugely modular but expensive synthesisers, with the "classic" processing chain being embodied in the first affordable mono synths of the seventies. Moving back to sampling, the Fairlight introduced this to us but it was hideously expensive and was initially the preserve of rich recording studios or even richer rock stars. Even the Emulator II had a five figure price tag when it came out. Mass produced sampling machines only became affordable to the masses in the late eighties/ early nineties.

However, you may be surprised that, if we throw away the "digital" tag, sample playback has actually been about for even longer than all of the technologies we have mentioned so far, and you’ve probably guessed by now that this is where the Mellotron fits into our musical technology map. It was the first commercially successful sample playback machine, and its inception predates every single technology we have spoken about so far.

Thus you can see that the Mellotron was right there at the beginning!
However, if you read the accompanying history (and without giving too much away, yet), you may be surprised to find out that the roots of the Mellotron stretch back even further into an earlier instrument But before we move further into Mellotron territory, consider this: Given the enormous technological arsenal we have today at our fingertips, why would anybody even consider using a Mellotron these days? If it is purely just capable of playing back samples, why bother when today’s samplers are capable of so much, cost less and certainly weigh less?

The answer is quite simple; it’s the sound generated by the Mellotron that makes it so special. In the same way that vintage analogue synthesisers are back in demand, the Mellotron is currently enjoying a renaissance, because people have realised that its sound is so unique. Here’s two recent (and diverse) examples: Steve Hackett (of Genesis fame) had two Mellotrons rebuilt for his retrospective look at early Genesis on his "Genesis Revisited" album, and Noel Gallagher of Oasis has taken delivery of a modern Mellotron MK VI, resplendent in its custom chocolate brown finish; all the Beatles each had one, so naturally he had to copy them!

Yes, the beast is back!

And although there is no absolute substitute for the original, the sounds you can download from this site are pretty damn close. And anyway, I could never get a real Mellotron up into my attic studio – humping the EX up there is bad enough!