Mellotronists

It brings up a lot of interesting points now, just as
it did in 1995. Just how MUCH tuning is appropriate?
The pipe organ is a notorius candidate. I had an
original frame that was unusable before I replaced it
with some re-tuned MA tapes in '97. Dave and Markus
have some very interesting data sheets of the exact
amount of "out of tuneness"  for all of the sounds in
the current library, very few were adjusted more than
5 cents or so. The tension inherent in the tuning of
the originals *did* add something that I think should
be retained. As for bias pops and clicks etc., that
stuff varied all over the place anyway, depending on
which work master was used by Les, Ron, Dave, Markus
et al. I have heard the flute sounds taken from 5
different reels and the "warts" are plentiful and
varied from reel to reel. I'm glad not to have ANY!!

As for method, MA used an old (albeit restored) Ampex
350 set w/ vari-speed to re-pitch the originals.
Another point that Dave made is that when you re-pitch
acoustic instruments, you also formant shift them
creating a smaller "body" and filter
characteristic...remember the munchkins of Ensoniq
Mirage fame? 

I've heard that Markus recently made another
remastering pass at the tapes using 24 bit / high
sample rate converters. Anymore re-tuning Markus? 

I'm quite sure that the Cedar system favored by Martin
and John works wonders at this idea since they have
tackled the whole pitching issue in many ways. I once
saw a demo of Cedar at a trade show and was very, very
impressed. 

Good luck with it guys, it's a good idea.

Mark

--- charel196 <charel196@...> wrote:

> Didn't Dave at Mellotron Archives already do this?
> There are tuned and 
> untuned versions on the Pinder CD Rom.
> 
> 
> 
> 


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