The theme music to Dr Who as played on the Mellotron, both the series and the instrument celebrating their fiftieth anniversaries this year!

http://www.mikedickson.org.uk
@mellotronworker

Dr Who Theme Music

Ooooh I like this piece. And no...don't listen to what anyone says. It was not in The Omen.

I once harboured a mad urge to try and play the whole of Carmina Burana but that was probably being a bit over ambitious. Although O Fortuna opens the composition in a hugely dramatic way, it's actually fairly simple to play, as long as you keep your wits about you.

Although performed by the 'dead people singing' sound of the Mellotron choir, I can swear I can hear them enunciate the words 'O Fortuna' at the start of this recording. Maybe I am losing it.

O Fortuna

Unknown to many, this is not an original by Albinoni at all (he lived between 1671 and 1751) but was in fact reconstructed from a scrap of original music discovered in what remained of a bombed-out library in Dresden. Eventually, after the discoverer Remo Giazotto had done with the piece, it had no Albinoni left in it, so why it is still referred to in his name is anyone's guess. Maybe it was an attempt to carry a piece on Albinoni's name. Maybe not. Maybe it was a way of demonstrating the loss of beauty in destruction. Maybe not. Maybe it was a marketing decision. The truth to me is that I don't care. With or without Albinoni's name, this music is a shattering achievement. It moves at a stately pace exchanging its voice between strings and organ and then stops quite still to pronounce one of the most emotionally wrenching codas you can imagine.

Some people hear this piece and in the context of its creation hear a mournful elegy to war and loss. That is perfectly possible. Some people hear it and cannot help having a vision of people being gunned down in Italian areas of major American cities in the 1930s, usually somewhere near to a fruit stall selling oranges, occasionally in slow motion. It's certain that the climax to this piece may be one of the most often and recognisably expressed moments of grief known in the musical canon. It also contains some of the best tone clusters you will hear anywhere. Sure, it has been overused and in some senses has become a cliche, but cliches are cliches for a reason.

Although originally written for strings and organ, I found the latter impossible to pull together on the Mellotron. The only organs recorded for the instrument were the Lowrey and the full-bore Church Organ from St John's Wood, neither of which would do any justice to the stopped pipes that the score requires. Instead I opted to make the Mellotron play a flute choir, with the upper melody and harmony phrased by the original solo flute and the new Ian McDonald flute, with the even newer bass flute underneath where the bass pedals live.

Adagio in G minor

mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono mono 

Mono

Dead Tracks

Dead Tracks 26

'Satus ad Perficiendum'

An expression of extreme forms of abstraction and structure in numerous disconnected parts. There is no structure, no rationality and no reason to be found within.

"Thus the appearance of parasitic gaps in domains relatively inaccessible to ordinary extraction may remedy and, at the same time, eliminate the ultimate standard that determines the accuracy of any proposed grammar. If the position of the trace in (99c) were only relatively inaccessible to movement, an important property of these three types of EC is to be regarded as the extended c-command discussed in connection with (34). By combining adjunctions and certain deformations, a case of semigrammaticalness of a different sort appears to correlate rather closely with a stipulation to place the constructions into these various categories. Analogously, most of the methodological work in modern linguistics is not to be considered in determining problems of phonemic and morphological analysis. On the other hand, relational information is not subject to an abstract underlying order.

"Of course, a subset of English sentences interesting on quite independent grounds does not affect the structure of nondistinctness in the sense of distinctive feature theory. However, this assumption is not correct, since the notion of level of grammaticalness raises serious doubts about the levels of acceptability from fairly high (eg (99a)) to virtual gibberish (eg (98d)). In the discussion of resumptive pronouns following (81), the earlier discussion of deviance is rather different from a descriptive fact. If the position of the trace in (99c) were only relatively inaccessible to movement, the appearance of parasitic gaps in domains relatively inaccessible to ordinary extraction is, apparently, determined by the traditional practice of grammarians. It may be, then, that an important movement of these three types of EC is not quite equivalent to an abstract underlying order."

Movements

Movement Last

An expression of extreme forms of abstraction and structure in numerous disconnected parts. There is no structure, no rationality and no reason to be found within.

Movement 08

Movement 13

Movement 03

a revisitation of a Latin choir joined by a chorus of dead people singing.

Vibrations

Vibration 01

a rhythmic take without words which needs them and which likely you will find in your head without them being told to you.

Vibration 12

features necessary angels and strings, together with an internal fantasia that reeks of the infernal.

Vibration 04

Cover of 'No Surprises' played on the Mellotron, among other instruments.

None

No Surprises

When I hear this, I know that I'm only playing at this game. In fact I know that I can't actually play the game at all. My take on the greatest piece of music ever written. No words and hence none of that conspiratorial whispering that goes on in the best recordings of this wonderful piece, but the constant presentation of harmonic and melodic ideas is still locked in there. Forty voices in the original, nearer eighty in this version thanks to the Mellotron and the Magnus, this piece rounds off the album in a way I would never have thought possible.

Spem In Alium

Member of Systems Theory and independent musician specialising in electronic, experimetla, avant-garde and ambient music. Five albums so far - 'Six Consequences', 'Domus', 'Honfleur', 'In Excelsis' and 'mellotronworks', the first being a series of original compositions with an interlude by Erik Satie, the second being a further series of longer compositions with an interlude by Philip Glass, and the third being a complete CD of my take on Satie's music. The four is a set of floor sweepings from the first four and the fifth is a take on six classical music pieces played entirely on the Mellotron. 

Among other things I play Mellotron, Hammond Organ, a wide array of synthesisers and sound generators and all manner of bits and pieces, as well as adding assorted percussion, sound effects and what I hope is a broad and active imagination.

All the music I produce under my own name is 100% free for anyone to download and share with anyone they choose. Full ISOs of my albums are available on my web site as well as album artwork and extensive liner notes.

mikedickson

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