M-Tron - MkII Strings "Starless"

Recently I read a few comments in a forum somewhere concerning the M-Tron. Essentially, the posters were having trouble getting that soft, silky, lush tone from the M-Tron string banks. You know, like the one used in King Crimson's "Starless" (among countless other examples). This video was put together to demonstrate that it *is* possible, with a lot of EQ, to get pretty close to that sound.

For this demo I had to do a few things:

1. Hear "Starless" for the first time (shame on me for not ever having heard this song before!)
2. Determine that the string sound in that song was something I could truly achieve with the M-Tron
3. Call up a set of EQ curves I had already made that pretty closely approximated that "Starless" tone
4. Listen to the opening of the song a half dozen or so times to learn the sequence

I did all this in a little less than half an hour, so I'm sure it's not perfect. But I think it brings across the point I wanted to make, which is that--with a fair amount of tweaking--pretty much anything is possible with the M-Tron. BTW, when I listened to the track, it sounded as though the part was played in intervals and not chords, so that's what I did. Aficionados please feel free to (politely) correct me if and where I've gone wrong with this rendition. Oh, and if you were wondering, I have *no idea* why I chose to do this with my left hand instead of my right. I never even thought about it until after I recorded the video.

NOTE: I used the "Violins 1" tape bank, then sculpted the sound with EQ (a lot of high end roll-off), plate reverb, and hall 'verb. So far as I know, I'm still waiting for GForce to come out with a "Violins 2" bank, at the very least. :)

As I've said before on my other videos, comments are always welcome!

-Squonk

P.S. Like what you've seen? Come visit me at my NEW WEBSITE!
http://ryderduncan.com

Category:

Music

Tags:

• m-tron
• mtron
• mellotron
• mkII
• king
• crimson
• red
• starless
• vst
• vsti
• violins
• gforce

[faunoram]

man ! that´s the sound!

i play the guitar but watching you play that software makes me want to learn keyboards

i love the sound of the mellotron, the moog and the rhodes

is there any emulation software for the rhodes?

that would be great

keep posting videos

thanks

cheers

[SquonkProductions]

VERY, VERY, COOL!!! Crimson rules!

[tseekr379]

You have quite an ear ;) sounds very nice...

I tend to do the same when I hear something is a bit off... and what a big surprise to find out I'm not the only one who adds plenty of eq and reverb to "smoothen out" a certain tone.

My favorites are Visual EQ + Concert Hall reverb!

[stupid28273]

Very cool.

Did they put a patch for No Quarter?

[jazzfan5000]

That sounds very authentic! I love it!

[Carlo8836]

You can get those tones, but you gotta run them through a mixer/software plug-in. I run my through Pro-tools.

[teedlebomb]

Great tone. A tad off in the mid-song chords but keep building!

[julianozain]

Priceless memories ... Thanks again for share your works

[myear23]

I think it sounds even nicer than the original sound! good job

[HoracioTempesta]

Wow man........that´s awesome, is the same sound......great work and thx, keep going

[SephynnXx]

I seriously am sold, I am buying M-Tron.....

[Tengent]

Oooh. Could you do The Rain Song - Led Zeppelin. I've been trying to figure out the mellotron parts myself. Finding out the harmony is hard for me.