In 2019, April, Arturia dropped another bomb and released their new version, Arturia V-collection 7. What was so explosive about this pack was the addition of extra 3 vintage synthesisers to their old ones which were already included in VC-7 (V collection 7). They brought 3 legendary synthesisers to the Arturia V family. The mighty mysterious EMS synthesiser, Haunting Mellotron and 80s cheesy Casio CZ. We won’t dive into each one of them but let’s take a look the vintage sounding Mellotron software ever!
A brief history of original Mellotron
So, here is a little about Mellotron. It was released in 1964 and subsequent versions of this synthesiser were released afterwards. Mellotron was used by various artists and bands of 1970s. For instance, aritsts like David Bowie heavily relied on Mellotron.
A lot of progressive rock’s defining sounds were created by Mellotron. Bands like Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, Led Zeppelin and others extensively used Mellotron. You can listen tosome tracks like “Watcher of the skies” by Genesis, “Epitaph” by King Crimson, “Kashmir” from Led Zeppelin contains the sound of Mellotron.
The appearance and interface of Arturia Mellotron
As always, Artruia did a great job maintaining the look of the original Mellotron. Even the panel looks wooden and aged, so the general look is as close as possible to the original one! The interface contains the exact same design of the original Mellotron. It has a volume control knob, a tone knob that brings or cut the clarity of the sound and a pitch shifter that can be assigned to your Midi’s Pitch bender.
Of course, the lever for blending the sounds is here as well and it has selects A, B and C. You can perfectly layer all of your sounds here and under the hood! You go to the top where you can open the top panel. You are then exposed to various other neat features to make your Mellotron sound vintage and yet very advanced. Opening up the panel board, you will see the exact same look of the tape frame and a giant capstan rotating on the right.
More features of Arturia Mellotron
Other features are the Arturia’s additional features which are actually nothing original and specific for Mellotron. With the advance features of Mellotron V, you are able to map each layer of the sound to the different parts of your keyboard. You are able to choose between one, two or all three of them and map them any way you want with the help of a slider for each voice. It may sound confusing just reading about it, but the whole interface is very user-friendly, so it is really easy to figure out everything that is needed for work.
Right on the edit mode you are able to load your own samples unlike the original ones and edit them anyway you want. You are also able to modify the sounds timber and loop them on different loop modes. Loading samples is available for each of these layers.
On the top, under the panel, there are classic A,D,S,R to give you a good amount of control over your sound and timing. What is more interesting is the fact you have a layer of knobs, starting from flutter, tape saturation, mechanics, noise generator, aftertouch and velocity to finish it with the touch of vintage sound. Arturia never fails to keep their game ahead and make it super entertaining for the users!