Mellotronists

I've been toying around with the idea (for a while now) to make 
my own three violins patch, and I finally got around to doing my 
first "rough draft" version of it...  For those of you who want to 
skip right to the audio clip then click this link:

http://www.vutdevuk.com/files/fm.mp3

Remember: the sounds in this audio clip are not being played on a 
tron, and it's definitely not Mellotron samples.  I am also just 
toying around, and not trying to do anything amazing in this audio 
clip. 
   I got the idea one day to listen through a bunch of solo violin 
pieces and wait for individual notes to be held out long enough to 
extract them, tag them, and send them to there own folder.  I had to 
do this until I had three different takes of the same note, and then 
I would mix each three, EQ them accordingly, and then render them 
into single wav files in a seperate folder. As I was mixing and 
rendering I would go ahead and import what I had into my virtual 
sampler to test how the notes sounded when blended together and 
whatnot. Even halfway through this little project I was starting to 
get chills!  My next step is to use real violins, brass sections, 
flutes, choirs, and whatever else I can think of....  Cheers!  -
Brady Arnold

GLORIOUS!!!

Hi Brady:

I can believe it's not a Mellotron, because this sounds BETTER than a Mellotron!  Yet, it does have a Tronish quality to it -- which is a neat orgainic thing in this digital age.  Its sort of a 21st Century Bitzoid Tron.  Can you tell us more about how you did this.  WHAT sampler did you use?  Did you use some sort of processing to make it sound more Tron like?  How many individual samples are involved?  How long are the samples? Is there any looping being used?  Nice sounding stuff!

Thanks,
Babz

On Monday, August 09, 2004, at 11:53AM, <Mellotronists@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

>   I've been toying around with the idea (for a while now) to make 
>my own three violins patch, and I finally got around to doing my 
>first "rough draft" version of it...  For those of you who want to 
>skip right to the audio clip then click this link:
>
>http://www.vutdevuk.com/files/fm.mp3
>
>Remember: the sounds in this audio clip are not being played on a 
>tron, and it's definitely not Mellotron samples.  I am also just 
>toying around, and not trying to do anything amazing in this audio 
>clip. 
>   I got the idea one day to listen through a bunch of solo violin 
>pieces and wait for individual notes to be held out long enough to 
>extract them, tag them, and send them to there own folder.  I had to 
>do this until I had three different takes of the same note, and then 
>I would mix each three, EQ them accordingly, and then render them 
>into single wav files in a seperate folder. As I was mixing and 
>rendering I would go ahead and import what I had into my virtual 
>sampler to test how the notes sounded when blended together and 
>whatnot. Even halfway through this little project I was starting to 
>get chills!  My next step is to use real violins, brass sections, 
>flutes, choirs, and whatever else I can think of....  Cheers!  -
>Brady Arnold
>

Wow!  This does sound great!  I suspect that the performers
of these samples are probably a little more reknown than
those that performed the orginal, 3 violins?  

[...uh oh, is this going to stir the pot?...]

I am curious how dry each of the original solo samples are?

This process could be used to create some, otherwise
impossible samples....

You could have entire combinations of great violinists! 
Choose from, Heifitz, Gidon Kramer, Solerno-Solenberg, Joshua
Bell, Michael Rabin, Yehudi Menuhin, etc....

One could do the same with opera stars (...gives a whole new
spin to the term, "3 Tenors"...)

Guitar players - sure, you can attend the G3 thing that
Satriani and Vai put together, but what if we could put Danny
Gatin, Jimi Hendrix, and Ritchie Blackmore on the same
sample?

ok, I'll stop here, before I start creating a sample with the
Canadian Brass and the Tower of Power horn section....

-jh



--- Brady Arnold <vutdevuk@...> wrote:

>    I've been toying around with the idea (for a while now)
> to make 
> my own three violins patch, and I finally got around to
> doing my 
> first "rough draft" version of it...  For those of you who
> want to 
> skip right to the audio clip then click this link:
> 
> http://www.vutdevuk.com/files/fm.mp3
> 
> Remember: the sounds in this audio clip are not being
> played on a 
> tron, and it's definitely not Mellotron samples.  I am also
> just 
> toying around, and not trying to do anything amazing in
> this audio 
> clip. 
>    I got the idea one day to listen through a bunch of solo
> violin 
> pieces and wait for individual notes to be held out long
> enough to 
> extract them, tag them, and send them to there own folder. 
> I had to 
> do this until I had three different takes of the same note,
> and then 
> I would mix each three, EQ them accordingly, and then
> render them 
> into single wav files in a seperate folder. As I was mixing
> and 
> rendering I would go ahead and import what I had into my
> virtual 
> sampler to test how the notes sounded when blended together
> and 
> whatnot. Even halfway through this little project I was
> starting to 
> get chills!  My next step is to use real violins, brass
> sections, 
> flutes, choirs, and whatever else I can think of.... 
> Cheers!  -
> Brady Arnold
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
> --------------------~--> 
> Listen to Internet Radio! Access to your favorite Artists!
> Click to listen to LAUNCHcast now!
> http://us.click.yahoo.com/Zkrq7C/GARHAA/n1hLAA/iWZylB/TM
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->

> 
> 
>  
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
>

Hi Brady:
> 
> I can believe it's not a Mellotron, because this sounds BETTER 
than a Mellotron!  Yet, it does have a Tronish quality to it -- 
which is a neat orgainic thing in this digital age.  Its sort of a 
21st Century Bitzoid Tron.  Can you tell us more about how you did 
this.  WHAT sampler did you use?  Did you use some sort of 
processing to make it sound more Tron like?  How many individual 
samples are involved?  How long are the samples? Is there any 
looping being used?  Nice sounding stuff!
> 
> Thanks,
> Babz
  
   Hi Babz,
   I first just wanted to start by extracting all the sustained 
notes I could find out of these violin pieces... I was searching 
everywhere to find as many of them as I could, witch ended up being 
a total of 98 notes (.wav files).  When I did the mix, I put a bit 
of hall reverb on the dry notes to make them match the other notes 
that where pre-mixed with reverb (by those who engineered the 
original solo violin pieces), this was done to create a bit more 
consistentsy between all the notes. Believe it or not I did not use 
any sort of processing to make these sound more tron-like, just some 
good ole fashsion EQ, and a lite touch of compression. The mix was 
done on Sonic Foundry Vegas 4.0 (Audio / Video production) software. 
In order to achive the 8 second long sample length, I did have to 
loop all the violin notes (hey, nobody performing a solo piece wants 
to hold a note for 8 seconds he he), but because there are three 
violins in the mix (with all different sample lengths) the loops 
never occoured right at the same time, thus giving the illusion that 
there is no loop. Another cool thing with the software I was using, 
I was able to do "fade looping" witch helped me to easily avoid the 
unwanted click / pop noise you get from standard looping. After the 
mix I ended up with 33 notes, missing only the g3, and d#5 keys 
witch gave me enough to work with.  For those missing notes, I just 
used the notes next to them. I am still searching for those notes.
   As far as the sampler, I used Virtual sampler 2.7 (on my PC) with 
a midi controller to play the sounds. Vsampler is the greatest toy 
that I have found for myself so far this year.  It gave me more of 
an excuse to collect (and create) as many Mellotron samples as 
possible!  I think I'm up to something like 4 Gigs (4,000 MB) of 
Mellotron samples now, including alot of sounds from the MKII.

Cheers.     -Brady

Rumor has it that Harry Chamberlin recorded three female violinists from
the Lawrence Welk Orchestra, in his bedroom no less. If true, that isn't
exactly the high school fiddler....well, isn't it?!.....

Can anyone confirm this?

Vance....playing my Chamberlin in my bedroom.....

-----Original Message-----
From: John Hofmeyer 

Wow!  This does sound great!  I suspect that the performers
of these samples are probably a little more reknown than
those that performed the orginal, 3 violins?  

[...uh oh, is this going to stir the pot?...]

-jh

[reposting as my original reply was gobbled by the internet gremlin]

On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, Pomeroy Ranch wrote:

> Vance....playing my Chamberlin in my bedroom.....



ummm...
won't you grow hair on your palms or go blind or something doing that?