[linux-audio-user] Re: Mellotron

[Juhana Sadeharju]

>From: Neil Durant <lists at sphere3.co.uk>
>
>Incidentally, would there be any copyright issues sampling the Mellotron
>tapes and redistributing?  After all they're recordings like anything else.

Maybe. Anyone knows email address of the guy who originally made
Mellotrons? www.mellotron.com guy has purchased the original tape
masters but that does not mean the sounds elsewhere are his property.

In any case, we want record the sounds now, before the tapes goes too
bad. The recorded sounds can then be placed to public domain in
a few ten years. How long is the copyright on sound recordings made
at 1960-1970? I know what books have but don't know what sounds have.

Most importantly. I want to take a look at the sounds because we
should recreate the sounds. That would save us all the trouble with
copyright issues. Because the Mellotron sounds were unusual and
good (though, Mamas&Papas had their own recordings) the recreation
should have similar variances and defects from the perfect recordings.
Existing sounds could be altered to have similar variances.

After we have the Mellotron like sounds, then people could play
with LinuxSampler, or have sequencers with a plugin which converts
the sequences to Mellotron sequences. User would get feedback
if the sequences cannot be played back with Mellotron. Long strings
could automatically be modified such that they can be played with
Mellotron. Things like that.

Juhana