RMI May 8 '04

duncan goddard on mellotron reliability

From a post to the Mellotronists YahooGroup, May 22, 2004. There had been a discussion of the issues Anekdoten, a progressive rock band, had with various Mellotron M400s on stage recently. RMI have used bumper sticker laden M400 #1098 for years both on and off stage, and Duncan Goddard definitely has an opinion on the subject of Mellotron reliability, in-tuneness, and so on.

<< I was surprised to find that [Anekdoten] brought their M400 along - I've been hearing several claims that they've stopped bringing it with them on the road for, well, the usual reasons. >> what are "the usual reasons"? my band, with the utmost gratitude to the various owners involved (most recently mr moore & mr coulter, whose names & serial numbers will be on any document we eventually release of the philly gig) have used seven different m400's on stage now. the only problems we've had are these two design flaws (& that's my opinion, but bear with me..): 1) there really is no good way to pick a 400 up without getting right underneath it- it should've had handles either bolted to or routed out of the ends. I always have to remind folks that the slots in the back can't be used to lift the thing.

2) the tuning control is /way/ too sensitive to movement; it seems to have been engineered to allow easy transposition of the instrument when so often what one actually needs to do is nudge the pitch a few cents because the various recordings on a set don't intonate with each other or anything else. this isn't because they were carelessly recorded but because different instruments have different pitch temperaments, & because the various artists responsible for the source noises were playing their notes in isolation from any musical context; no way for them to lean the pitch one way or another to favour the key...so we have to do it on-the-fly. does anybody know what the chorists used as a pitch reference for their recordings, btw? & people complain that the mellotron is somehow out-of-tune. sorry, but that's bollocks. if you play the violin in an orchestra with a load of brass instruments, you will intonate differently than if you were playing with a string quartet, & differently again with a piano, & you'd do different things in different keys too. the mellotron can't adapt like this on its own so either it sounds "out-of-tune" or you keep one hand on the pitch knob. that's why it's so near the keyboard. on my 400, the modified pitch control allows about a semitone either side of centre. we aren't clever enough to need to transpose. jimmy, jeff, ken & others may have noticed steve & me fighting the tuning a little on the machines in philly- this was because of the aforementioned & not any reliability problems with the two excellent 400's we were loaned. in fact, the only gripes I have any first-hand knowledge of came from a guy at work who does the monitor mixes for visiting bands. he was once a roadie for greenslade & recalled (on the occasion of 1098 visiting mtv back in '96) that they were instructed to remove the tapes from dave's 400 before moving it anywhere. this process was sufficiently tedious that they would sabotage the 'tron by forgetting to reload the frame before several gigs. that's the only "mellotrons are a nuisance" anecdote I can find any support for.

with the excellent support we now have for these machines, there's simply no excuse for not gigging them beyond the purely logistical matter of shifting them. anyway, that's what I reckon. duncan/1098 (the stickertron)

Suggested Listening

With so many CDs available from r.m.i., which should you check out first? Your Webmaster posed that question to Mr. Goddard.

Official Centaur releases:

For first timers, Duncan recommends "Borrowed Atoms" or "Frozen North." "Frozen North" is r.m.i.'s first official release---and a double CD. It gives you a very good idea of what r.m.i. is all about.

Private stock:

There are many more of these. Duncan feels that "Solid States" is a good mix of pure electronica and the space rock that happens whenever a drum set is available. "Planets in the Wires" is a good example of r.m.i. when they aren't on stage.

Please see the Radio Massacre International web site for information about these CDs. There are MP3 snippets out there as well.

(For ordering my electronic music (generally not available in the United States), I usually go to Groove, SMD, or Eurock, although not all releases are available everywhere.)