For some reason I was thinking about this the other day. I can only think of a few though.
For some reason I was thinking about this the other day. I can only think of a few though.
Do not suffer through the game of chance that plays....always doors to lock away your dreams (To Be Over)
Everything billed as "prog" that has been released in the past decade has a Mellotron beginning, middle and end!
Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883...
Sailors Tale, of course. (serenity in a nutshell, too!) ends with a mellotron by itself. Then Seven Stones, of course ends with mellotron as lead instrument, and Fountain of Salmacis with a mellotron swell. I know there are plenty of others....
Marvin Gaye's 'Mercy Mercy Me'.
"Catherine Howard" on Six Wives ends with solo mellotron flute.
The first one that popped into my head was "lay down" by the Strawbs. Genesis "entangled" and Pavlov's Dog "did you see him cry" also come to mind.
Do not suffer through the game of chance that plays....always doors to lock away your dreams (To Be Over)
This is probably one of the ultimate songs in this category.
Do not suffer through the game of chance that plays....always doors to lock away your dreams (To Be Over)
Traffic-Dream Gerrard.
There is bass guitar in there as well.
"please do not understand me too quickly"-andre gide
"Arf." -- Frank Zappa, "Beauty Knows No Pain" (live version)
Peter Hammill - "Faint Heart and the Sermon"
Peter Hammill - "Wilhelmina"
Captain Beefheart - "Sue Egypt"
Spring - "The Prisoner (Eight By Ten)"Originally Posted by bill g
Hell, they ain't even old-timey ! - Homer Stokes
You can hear the rare Mellotron pipe organ sound at the end of this track (a cover version of “Une fille comme toi,” originally by Christian Gaubert):
Good call on the Marvin Gaye tune, I had forgotten about that (was it Mellotron or Chamberlin, though? Does it really matter? :P).
Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883...
There is Mellotron in the background at the ending of the IQ song The Last Human Getaway.
Last edited by JIF; 02-17-2014 at 12:41 AM.
In the Wake of Poseidon...might have more than just mellotron, but it shine through as it was meant to..
Death of a Child
www.soundcloud.com/darklounge
Epsilon in Malaysian Pale
Maroubra Bay
GENESiS: “entangled”. and what an ending that is.
How do you tell the difference (sound) between a mellotron and electric keyboard/synthesizer?
It's easy to tell. The Mellotron uses 8-track tapes, synths do not.
of course! that explains it all.
Well, at the risk of being pedantic, the Birotron used a form of an 8-track tape cartridge. The Mellotron used tape strips in a frame, as pictured above. But the basic defining characteristic is tape, and the mechanical anomalies that provided what some now consider "character" when it was played back.
No way!
There's a scratchiness/creakiness about the Mellotron that is very appealing, the way the note cuts out if you play another one after it, rather than leaving reverb of the previous note (very technical!). It has much more grit than those awful, later 'string synth' sounds. I get that musicians weren't always too fond of them due to their unreliability- it's not so much the instrument for me as the sound itself that I like so much. I always prefer the Mellotron, Hammond organ and early Moog synthesiser sounds to what came later. In particular, I'm not into sounds that dominated the 80s at all.
One of my own favourite albums The Zombies' 'Odessey and Oracle' is swimming in Mellotron, 'Changes' and 'Hung Up On A Dream' in particular. That's as good an album as any to discover just how great that sound is. Or indeed the end of Genesis' 'Seven Stones', which is an iconic use of the instrument, as noted above.
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