A new Mellow Tron-ish cassette synth.

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WonderCouncil
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A new Mellow Tron-ish cassette synth.

Post by WonderCouncil » Sun Jul 31, 2016 12:46 am

I came across this on another forum I frequent for experiential/noise type stuff and thought it was just a little too neat not to share!

http://www.ondemagnetique.com/
Image

It's a pretty ingenious idea and does seem to capture some of the Mellow Tron charm. Has some useful added features and the ribbon pitch controller sounds like it could be wacky cool. I'm digging the engraved labeling and clean lines as well. It'll be interesting to see what others can do with it.

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Re: A new Mellow Tron-ish cassette synth.

Post by egosheep » Sun Jul 31, 2016 1:23 am

This one has a similar idea, but it uses MIDI to get more note access:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZFbSsr78e4

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Re: A new Mellow Tron-ish cassette synth.

Post by WonderCouncil » Sun Jul 31, 2016 10:52 pm

Woah! That one is way cooler! And you can daisy chain multiple units, pretty darn awesome. I'm going to be keeping an eye on them, thanks! Very curious to see what the price will be.

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Re: A new Mellow Tron-ish cassette synth.

Post by egosheep » Tue Aug 02, 2016 8:06 pm

Did you ever see the MelloMan that Mike Walters made? It was a mellotron with Walkmen as the tape mechanism, he had each side of the stereo doing octaves, so he could get 28 notes with 14 tapedecks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx-TE_aapDQ

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Re: A new Mellow Tron-ish cassette synth.

Post by WonderCouncil » Fri Aug 12, 2016 12:38 am

Thanks for posting the link, I had forgotten about that one. It's really impressive and pretty inspiring what he accomplished with that project. Not to mention how cool it looks. Makes me want to hit up the thrift shops and try my hand at a mini-er version.

Not exactly the same, at all I guess, but I've had the idea for some time to do a key board instrument using those little DC motors and magnetic pickups. The motors would be set near magnetic pickups and in ascending speeds left to right. Which ultimately makes them produce different tones/timbres. The keys would then act as on/offs for each motor.

My other thought which it far less doable uses motorized music box mechanisms, which I never knew actually existed till a couple years ago when I was looking into it. The pin drum would have the pins in a spiral design all the way around and each comb would be tuned to a different note. As the pin drum spins it would essentially produce a constant tone. Maybe even have knobs for motor speed as well.

I probably didn't explain it that well but in my mind it sounds magical :D. From what little research I've done however, custom music box movements are pricey! I may give it a try anyways though with random song ones though. The motorized versions are pretty cheap online. Could definitely be interesting with each key playing different songs.

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Re: A new Mellow Tron-ish cassette synth.

Post by egosheep » Fri Aug 12, 2016 7:12 pm

WonderCouncil wrote:My other thought which it far less doable uses motorized music box mechanisms, which I never knew actually existed till a couple years ago when I was looking into it. The pin drum would have the pins in a spiral design all the way around and each comb would be tuned to a different note. As the pin drum spins it would essentially produce a constant tone. Maybe even have knobs for motor speed as well.

I probably didn't explain it that well but in my mind it sounds magical . From what little research I've done however, custom music box movements are pricey! I may give it a try anyways though with random song ones though. The motorized versions are pretty cheap online. Could definitely be interesting with each key playing different songs.
Have you seen these? This band does some cool stuff with music boxes... pretty good use of legos in each case, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFfe4ZRQOH8

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