The Mellotron is the infamous tape playback instrument whose sounds can be the perfect antidote to sterility. We show you how to bring its charm to the instruments you already have.
What Is The Mellotron Sound?
This furniture-sized keyboard instrument contains tape recordings of real instruments. You hold a key, it plays the tape. It was developed for home use, but quickly became the must-have toy for many famous acts in the 60s before becoming a mainstay in the keyboard rig of many throughout the 60s and 70s, forming what was for many the Holy Trinity alongside the Hammond organ, and the Fender Rhodes electric piano.
Technically, the sound can be described, noisy, unstable, and band-limited. Artistically, the Mellotron and its cousins have an irresistible charm that can bring an organic glow or sinister twist to instrumentation like no other.
Arturia Tape MELLO-FI
Tape MELLO-FI takes the modelling parameters and modulations from its parent plugin, the Mellotron V, and gives them to you for free. The plugin gives you a drivable preamp section with adjustable electrical noise, and a tape section that allows you to dial in various artifacts to achieve your desired level of level sorrow…
The Wear control covers tape condition, whereas unusually, rather than Wow for pitch drop and Flutter for pitch rise, these two controls do overall pitch variation (Wow) and rate (Flutter). A really nice original touch is the Mechanics control that lets you dial in flywheel noise… Now you can have the Mellotron’s melancholic wheeze on whatever you like.