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Der all,

I am afraid that we left you waiting for such a long time until today. I wonder whether you could accept our apologies for being quite so long.

I can assure you that the last weeks have been extremely busy for us and now it is time to announce the upcoming release of the KM400 library, our Mellotron feature. We just completed a demo sequence and Oliver Rehn is about to release the lib on the web.

We hope that you will like the Genesis type sound of it .

Also, I would like to mention that we are almost finished with the KSL symphonic library. It will be the comprehensive library that has ever been released for the OASYS: We programmed 640 programs and are about to complete a nice set of combinations. I am sure that you will be amazed about the demo sequences we have prepared. Let's keep our fingers crossed that we will be done with this library within this month, also.

Best wishes,
Peter

PeterJung-IKT wrote: We hope that you will like the Genesis type sound of it .

God, just what I've been waiting for. But for the OASYS

Do you guys plan to develop libraries for the M3/M50 sometime in the future?

mocando wrote:

PeterJung-IKT wrote: We hope that you will like the Genesis type sound of it .

God, just what I've been waiting for. But for the OASYS

Do you guys plan to develop libraries for the M3/M50 sometime in the future?

Hi mocando,

perhaps in the future

Best regards,

Kurt

KARO Sound Development
EWBR, Peter, Guido & medusaland

I have been using the Mike Pinder library for a long time.
I was waiting for a news like this.
Is it possible to have more infos about sampling process? (all notes or intervals, looped/no looped, samples lenght etc etc etc).

medusaland wrote: Hi mocando,

perhaps in the future

Best regards,

Kurt

KARO Sound Development
EWBR, Peter, Guido & medusaland

Awesome

tonybanks wrote:I have been using the Mike Pinder library for a long time.
I was waiting for a news like this.
Is it possible to have more infos about sampling process? (all notes or intervals, looped/no looped, samples lenght etc etc etc).

Hi OASYANS,

of course every single note was recorded and the samples were not looped so authentic as to the original sound

here are some news and a short demo

http://karo-sounds.com/web/km400_e.html

Take care,

Kurt

KARO sound development
EWBR, Peter, Guido & medusaland

tonybanks wrote:I have been using the Mike Pinder library for a long time.
I was waiting for a news like this.
Is it possible to have more infos about sampling process? (all notes or intervals, looped/no looped, samples lenght etc etc etc).

Hi tonybanks,

I just visited your web site. Great band and great work! Let me know when you plan to have a gig in Duisburg, Germany. I will try to make it to the show!

Bests,
Peter

Hello to everybody being interested in KARO's new KM-400,

My name is Klaus Hoffmann-Hoock and I am responsible for KARO's Mellotron samples. You might have come across me when the talk comes to Trons and mellotronic samples.
Being a real aficionado of those lovely tape-driven machines since the first time I heard them in the mid-sixties, I purchased my first M 400 in 1974 and owned up to now exactly 50 Mellotrons, among them celebrities like KLAUS SCHULZE's double-manual Mellotron Mk V and two of TANGERINE DREAM's Trons (Peter Baumann's M 400 and Edgar Froese's Novatron Mk V). More than a hundred tape frames with stock sounds and a lot of custom made noises (e.g. YES' stage sounds) belong to my huge collection.
In 1981, searching for more information about the Mellotron (in those days hardly anything could be found about it on the continent), I got to know Les, Norman and John Bradley who then built the Tron in Streetly near Birmingham. Due to my enthusiasm for their instruments, my advanced mellotronic knowledge and my bi-lingual abilities (German / English) they asked me the following year to help on their Frankfurt Music Fair stall dealing with German customers. During those five days I got to know nearly everything about the Mellotron's story, the people who built and helped to launch this beautiful machine and of course a lot of funny anecdotes about them, too.
Having read a lot of bull.... in musical papers about the Tron and its apparently miserable, always hissy, noisy sounds I decided to write full, true stories about the different Mellotron models, their history and sounds, how to play, adjust and take care of them. Those successful publications in German musical papers helped me by accident to become a sort of "Mr Mellotron Germany" with people contacting me in search of Trons or in need of repair jobs or asking for technical advice.
With the advent of the digital DAT format in the early 80s I realized that there might come a time when Mellotron tapes have worn out or would no longer be available, thus I started to record on DAT (44.1 kHz sample rate) all 35 notes in full length of all my tape frames with its three tracks (what a work!). To obtain the optimum performance I had thoroughly cleaned my well-adjusted Mellotrons, their tapes and all parts they get in contact with, trying to preserve those magical sounds for the future. To make a long story short, parts of my sound library later were used for the M-TRON and its PRO version, on Masterbits' 'Mellozone', in the mighty MEMOTRON keyboard and now in a special edition for KARO's KM-400.
Unlike many other attempts to catch the Mellotron's magic on various CD-Roms or in programs my samples stem from the best frames and tapes I could put my hands on and believe me there is a lot of difference between the tape frames (how often they were used and how they were treated) and even the sounds themselves. Be it the way they were transferred from the master tape to the frame's tapes (an EQ could be set by the personal taste of the recording person!), the various sorts of tape material (the black back-coated mostly was a horror) or the time when the recordings were copied (i.e. using the copy of the master tape's copy...).
I tried to preserve the best on DAT and never looped any of the up to eight seconds long original samples because this completely changes the way a Tron has to be played. Instead of laying brick chords on the keys a Mellotronist has to play in a 'spider walk' way, constantly changing or releasing the notes after about let's say 6 -7 seconds to keep the illusion of a real orchestra or a string set.
That is the secret that makes the Mellotron and KARO's KM-400 sound so lively and real. We really tried to do our best. The Bradley brothers' vision of an instrument with a very distinctive character that enables its player to "have an orchestra under his fingers" finally has become true.
Wishing you a lot of fun with the KM-400
Mellotronically yours

Klaus Hoffmann-Hoock

Mr Mellotron wrote: Unlike many other attempts to catch the Mellotron's magic on various CD-Roms or in programs my samples stem from the best frames and tapes I could put my hands on and believe me there is a lot of difference between the tape frames
Klaus Hoffmann-Hoock

Just had a first play with this and must congratulate all involved. The sound quality is stunning across all 10 'frames' and the clarity with just the right amount of effects programming etc means I won't be stopping playing my Lawnmower in Strawberry Fields anytime soon!
Having such good quality programs as a starting point I can only imagine the fun when using in combis or with some classic phasing, filtering etc.
Again - thanks for a great set of programs!
Cheers,
Michael.

This package is amazing. Excellent job!!! patch 023 the St. chuch organ is exactly the sound used by Geoff Downes of Asia in the song Daylight. The solo violin is intoxicating. Sometime its not sampling perfection but the character of the sound. I love it.

Just gave it a try - an excellent replica AFAIK the original.