I’m a guitarist by nature but my recent purchase of the Taurus 3 has been the catalyst for me branching out into other suplemental directions in creating my “Ambient Music”. My next step is to incorporate the classic sound of the famous Mellotron. My thought process is to purchase some kind of sampling keyboard to which I can download a sample of the Mellotron. I have been reading about the G-Force M-Tron plug in. Just exactly is this? Do you play it on the computer or download it into a keyborad? I’m a real newbi in the are so feel free to dummy-down for me. I didn’t know where else to pose this question. Thanks.
You can buy a new digital Mellotron or a Memotron. They are the best out there.
http://www.mellotron.com/
http://www.mellotron.com/digital-mellotron.html
http://www.manikin-electronic.com/en/products_memotron.html
Yeah, or the M-Tron for $50 or whatever. 
Scott, you play it on your computer.
There are a few free downloadable VST programs emulating the Mellotron.
I have Meltron (not absolutely accurate); Nanotron (very good, but has the restricted key range of the original Mellotron); and Tapeworm (fairly accurate and can be played over the entire range of the keyboard).
I find I use Nanotron usually, with Tapeworm occasionally. Tapeworm only has one voice sound , the male one, whereas Mellotrons move from male to female (Nanotron is accurate in this respect). Also Nanotron can mix voices like a Mellotron, while Tapeworm can’t. Tapeworm does have an ADSR envelope shaper, though, unlike the Mellotron, but good for amending the sound.
To run a VST program you need a VST host program. I use one called VSTHost - appropriately enough - which is free.
For any software you really need a MIDI keyboard and a soundcard that can accept MIDI signals. You can play one note at a time with your mouse, but it isn’t really very practical.
It’s worth checking out VST programs generally, as the free ones give you a good idea of what you might look for in anything you pay for, and many of them are very useable anyway.
The Mellotron has some good and distinctive sounds, but can also easily start to sound hackneyed. Alternative sounds are available free or cheaply.
It’s also worth doing something most people don’t do, and checking out the kind of home keyboards from Casio and Technics that turn up pretty cheap on ebay. The Casio CTK 900 is superb, in my view. The sounds are good and it has a certain degree of programmability. I made a reverb flute that sounds quite like the Mellotron flute only better. It also has a ring modulator that can make some quite amazing sounds when you get into it. No-one suspects a keyboard with built-in speakers for amateur use at home would have that kind of hidden power.
`Birds’ on my website was done entirely with the Casio CTK 900, and it appears on some of my other recordings. The Tibetan chants on one of the other tracks were done partly by me and partly by the Casio, for example.
digital mellotron is cool, but the sound is not much better if at all than the Sampletron, which is the best (most sounds) out there. Run from computer to tape delay and you have a very convincing tron.
Casio? Really? I didn’t know they produced higher end keyboards. Thanks, I’ll look at those.
…and you’re doing this with the mouse? Isn’t that a little slow? Just trying to visualize it. Thanks.
Interesting…wondering what the price range will be…Thanks.
They don’t market them as high end. Casio got stung a bit when they entered the high end market with the CZ series, because Yamaha took them to court for infringing their rights on FM synthesis. To be honest I don’t know how Yamaha won, because the phase distortion on the CZ synths from Casio doesn’t sound like FM.
So they returned to home keyboards, but I can only think they must have some frustrated synth designers working at Casio when they have people putting ring modulators into home keyboards for people who can work out how to access them.
I paid about £50 for my CTK 900 on ebay. It’s brilliant as far as I’m concerned, though of course the sounds may not suit everybody. I’d rather have it than a Mellotron any day, though.
Thank you Sweep for the information.
Nah…you map the knobs on the digital interface to the knobs on a midi keyboard. You can control the knobs with a mouse if you want to.
Think of it this way: what’s the diff between a computer and a digital synth? They’re both running software…the difference is where the software is running from. Software synths or VSTs are running from your computer, but, just like a digital synthesizer, you’re still controlling them with a keyboard.
Ahhhh…That’s what I sort of had in mind. Now…can you suggest a keyboard and software? Thanks much.
Actually, you can use any keyboard that has a midi out.
You need:
a keyboard w/ midi out
computer w/ soundcard w/ midi in
software
A bunch of software has been mentioned here already. I’d go w/ the free stuff. There’s tons of it, actually.
Same w/ midi keyboards…there’s tons of them out there. Same advice: get something cheap and learn about it. Or if you’ve got a keyboard w/ midi out, just find out how to turn the “local” sounds to off and use that.
Perfect…thank you.