Hauptwerk Mellotron

Dear all,

with kind permission from a nice guy who created a complete set of mellotron samples I'll make a Mellotron for Hauptwerk from these samples. This will be a free sample set, made from free samples, and together with the Hauptwerk Free Edition will make up a completely free Mellotron.
I have a first beta version nearly ready, which I will make available for download in the next few days. This will be a very rough cut initially, but it should improve over time, perhaps even with the help of some of you. One thing I am still in need of to make this a nice sample set is some nice images to use in a Hauptwerk GUI. Anyone of you have a Mellotron to take some pictures of that would be available to be used in a free sample set?

Best regards
Reiner

Nice idea Reiner - that'll be fun...and really kind of you to give it to the community.

Which tapes did your friend sample?

Hi Reiner,

Thanks for sharing this! I'm looking forward to having some fun with the Mellotron sounds

Kind regards,
GrahamG

Hello Reiner,

interesting idea! I had to google for Mellotron since not knowing what that is. We are now entering the area of quadratic virtual instruments?

Regarding pictures, i am rather shure you know this site: http://www.nordkeyboards.com/main.asp?tm=Sound%20Libraries&cllibr=Nord_Sample_Library&clslib=Mellotron

Thank you very much for your engagement - Martin

Reiner, this sounds most exciting. I'm looking forward to release of the Mellotron samples.

Good news!
The very first version is ready and can be downloaded from my server. Please be aware that this is really a first cut, there will be improvements soon. Most noticable is the GUI, which is HW1 alike at this point. As soon as I get my hands on a nice royalty free image of a mellotron (e.g. an M400 model) I will make a good looking GUi for it. Also I'm sure some samples may use a little retouching.

Here's what's under the hood:
The samples have been recorded by Bernie Kornowicz aka tajiguy on the KVR forum. Over the past years he recorded a set of Mellotron tapes and made these available for free to anyone who might like them (thanks Bernie!!!)
Here is the link to Bernie's download site, which also includes some notes about the history of the particular samples:

http://leisureland.us/audio/MellotronSamples/MellotronSamples.htm.

All I did for the Hauptwerk version is to rename the samples following the Hauptwerk naming scheme, applied a little eq (he recorded the samples with the tone control cranked up all the way, which makes them unnaturally bright), and added the markers required by Hauptwerk to play them. However, I purposely did not loop the samples, i.e. the original characteristic of the mellotron with notes ending after 7-8 seconds is retained.

Licence: The samples and the Hauptwerk ODF associated with it are free and may be freely distributed. It is NOT allowed to sell the samples in any form, you may however modify the samples or the Hauptwerk mellotron to your linking and share the result freely with others, as long as you're not asking for money. (I'll create a more precise wording of this in the near future, but for now you get the idea).

I'll put up some information and links on my website soon, but meanwhile:
Here is the download link:
http://www.pipeloops.com/assets/Pipeloops_Mellotron_1.0.CompPkg.Hauptwerk.rar

Naturally, samples and ODF are not encrypted, so you can modify as much as you like. Also, this works great with the Hauptwerk Free Edition!

ENJOY!

Hello Reiner,

... downloaded, installed with no problems - all works perfectly ( but one has still reduce the overall amplitude to around -16 db ).

Thank you very much - Martin

Reiner,

It works fine. Nice job so far. Maybe for your next project you could tackle the Optigan!

How fun! Look forward to trying this.

It works fine. Nice job so far. Maybe for your next project you could tackle the Optigan!

Always on the lookout for strange instruments; this was a new one for me
In the meantime... have a look at : http://www.optigan.com/info/optigan/the ... l-optigan/

Hi Reiner,
Thanks for this new instrument. It works great and as I played the real thing back in 1978 I can say so
Sorry I don't own any of these beasts anymore and provide with some pics :-/

But, as I got also for some time now Bernie's versions (GiG and sfz), there are two pictures inside the sfz version of the donor instrument. Can you possibly use them?

Another interesting instrument to sample and come with a great Hauptwerk set is the Chamberlin Grand Master series. Ancester of Mellotrons and has two manuals side by side and a 13 note pedalboard !!
Its violis section was better than later Mellotrons and Novatrons as it was double and had better .."samples" on its tapes !

You can get an idea of how all those tape engined instruments can sound digitally by trying the SampleTron (standalone & VSTi) from IK Multimedia. Also its pdf gives many details.

Lookin' forward for your improved version

All my Best
Panos

Hello all ...

I am just downloading the Mellotron samples now. I will be interested to hear what they sound like because I have a Clavia Nord Electro-3/73 keyboard and I have all the samples which they produce for it.

There are a great many samples for the Nord Electro 3, but overall, when using samples it is disappointing, mainly because the Nord has such a tiny amount of RAM (well under half a gigabyte), and that RAM has to hold the pianos and all the other instruments that you need for one session. The largest Steinway Grand takes nearly all of the RAM on its own! I could never see why it didn't have at least 4Gbyte fitted!

I must say that I find the Nord Electro best when playing digital pianos, or tine-based pianos like the Wurly and the Clavinet-type instruments - that takes me back to my band of the 1960's!

I wrote a review of the Clavia Nord Electro 3/73 here: http://www.reviewstream.com/reviews/?p=129705 a while ago.

I'll post again when I have installed and tried the Mellotron sample set.

All the best

Ken

I'm finding that holding down a lot of notes generates intolerable crackling - with all the HW performance indicators still around zero (on a machine that can play the full Salisbury). Anyone got any idea why?

Paul

Hi Paul,

You may be overdriving your soundcard... typically the crackling can be caused by the organ volume in HW being too high, so reduce the -dB value (one of the other users runs his at -16dB).

Kind regards,
GrahamG

Oh, stoopid! I should have thought; I've just never hit that with any HW sample set before, so didn't think to check.

Paul

Having installed and now played the Mellotron ... interesting! Playing them through the same speakers I use with my Nord Electro (2 x 100W Samson Resolve A6) produced rather a different sound from the Nord, but not inferior, just different.

Most of the Mellotron voices in my Nord Electro 3 extend over the 6-octave range of the Electro-3/73 keyboard, though I accept that the orginal Mellotron had only about three octaves on each of its side-by-side manuals. Maybe Riener might be thinking of extending the range on his next release.

I found it necessary to apply 20db cut to the volume of the signal to get the volume I use with my other organs, so those tapes were probably recorded flat-out so as to reduce tape noise after the first 15 minutes of continuous running!

Any UK residents will remember David Nixon, an English TV magician - here he is playing the Mellotron and demonstrating what it can do! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrXtmKGkSa4. I also remember Steve Race also playing one at some point. Amazing really that it worked at all, given the problems I remember getting those old tape-based guitar reverberation/echo units to work reliably. I bet the Mellotron's tapes didn't last long.

All the best

Ken