BiroTron B-90

[Rob Smith]

Designed by Dave BIro and financed by Rick Wakeman, This keyboard was designed to replace the mellotron 400E for Yes and Rick Wakeman tours in 1976/1977. Used on the Yes album Going For The One. Rick toured with 4 of these w/ MiniMoogs on top of each one. I met Dave Biro in the summer of 1976 when I was 16 in Litchfield, Connecticut, He had two B-90's on stage with Minimoogs on top and was Performing Ricks Journey to the center of the earth. He was amazed how this kid could know about the equipment he was using and was very gracious during the intermission and showed me his rig. He spoke of his partnership with Rick Wakeman and that Rick was using it on the next Yes album. I spoke to Rick in 2003 and he told me he does'nt own one anymore , But really loved the sound of it. He also said he almost lost his shirt with Birotronic LTD back in the day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URR7l-uI6JA

[Sweep]

Thanks for that. It's a bit of history that might otherwise be lost.

I remember the Birotron at the time, though only very generally from Rick Wakeman using it.

If I remember, he used it on the Yes Tormato album which was a bit of a washout, which probably didn't help the Birotron as much as might have been the case if he'd used it prominently on a better album.

I always thought the name let it down as well. I can see from your post where the Biro name came from, but in Britain at that time a cheap ballpoint pen was known as a biro, and `Birotron' suggested something cheap, maybe conjuring up a mental picture of something with a pen attachment like a Stylophone.

That may have nothing to do with the failure of the instrument, but I do wonder if it could have been a factor. If it had been clear to everyone what it really was and what it did, any problems with the name would have vanished, but it needed more of a push than it got, even with Rick Wakeman behind it, and wrong associations may have been a factor in it failing. A real pity.

[Rob Smith]

Here is some more information on the BiroTron B-90:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birotron

I hope you find it useful.
Regards, Rob Smith

[Sweep]

Thanks, that was interesting. I'd never thought of doing a search on the net because, like one of the people quoted, I haven't heard the name Birotron in over two decades - probably nearer three.

I hadn't realised how much interest there was in the instrument. I'm especially surprised that Keith Emerson wanted one, as he never used the mellotron at any point as far as I can recall.

It really sounds like a lost opportunity. As someone who's experimented a lot with sampling and especially with quite long samples, I wonder what could have been done at the time using a Birotron. Certainly digital sampling couldn't have come near for many years. The early Fairlights, Emulators and so on had such short sampling times. But digital sampling has now caught up with what the Birotron could have done then. Still, I wonder what the creative musicians around in the late seventies and early eighties might have done with it.

Talking of rare instruments, I was talking with someone a few years ago who had something possibly as rare as the Birotron. This was a guy who worked with Harald Bode at the end of his life, and had plans to build and market Bode's last invention, a `barber-pole' type phaser. There was a commercial version in the early 80s, though few if any examples seem to still exist. There was a guy on a forum trying to revive one a year or two back.

The reissue never happened as the guy who talked with me about it had health problems. He sent me a copy of Harald Bode's own demo of the phaser, which I sampled and used in a piece (now on my website) and a chunk of the demo also appeared at the beginning of my cover of Gong's I've Bin Stoned Before, but I don't know what other recordings may have been done using it - with an actual unit and not just samples of Bode's demo. It makes me wonder what other gems just never made it into proper production, or were produced in very small numbers and not really discovered.

[Elgee Noro]

Not quit off topic: Mellotron-Birotron

During the Triloguy Tour in 1972 ELP used a mellotron for their Bolero. I read in an interview that Lake couldn't handle keys very well. Not in the way Emerson wanted it anyway. So the mellotron had to leave the stage. Exit... stage left or right. The choice was hers.

Anyway, in the rest of the tour as well in "The Get Me A ladder Tour" of spring 1973 they used a shortened version of Abbadons Bolero on tape as showopener.

[Sweep]

Thanks. That's an interesting little snippet of information I hadn't heard before.

I'd imagine being asked to play keyboard parts to Keith Emerson's specifications could be pretty demanding. I didn't know Greg Lake had ever been asked to do that.

It's interesting that there's a MiniMoog on top of the mellotron in the photo, as well, and that's clearly Lake's side of the stage.

[hieronymous]

I am loving this thread! I always wondered what the Birotron was when I would read the credits for Tormato. What a weird album...

[Rob Smith]

Heres Wakeman using the Birotron during the Tormato sessions.They are the keyboards stacked one atop they other on ricks left. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5KQIaHFma4

[Jaguarfooger]

Oh how I wish--I wish--I wish Moog would pick up where instruments like the Birotron/Optigan and definitely the Mellotron left off.

I wouldn't suggest that Moog recreated a full-fledged keyboard with 1-tape per key like a traditional Mellotron.

But perhaps--if Moog got back into developing individual synthesizer modules--they might put out a range of tape-based sampler/playback units that can be hooked together....and using control voltages they may be set up to do cool synthesizer sounds and/or depending on what combinations of units one collects, perhaps polyphonic mellotron/birotron sounds.

Would it be neat?

On a somewhat related note....I've never seen such a thing, but I'd kind of be surprised if such a thing was never once tried--at least in somebody's workshop. Has anybody every attempted to build an instrument out of a gramophone? Were there ever any attempts to put sound loops on a victor talking machine cylinder and add a few dozen extra needles to allow such a device to produce individual notes? Or....at the very least--has anyone played a gramophone by using a cylinder that has a single continuous sound and changing the playback speed to raise/lower the pitch?

If anything like this exists as a youtube video or even an old recording, I would completely freak out with joy. If anyone tries something like this, please post a link to any accounts of your experiments!!

Oh man….If I had a totally analog/mechanical sampler to take to bluegrass jam sessions, I could be as legendary as the fabled Albino Bowler!!

[Sweep]

On a somewhat related note....I've never seen such a thing, but I'd kind of be surprised if such a thing was never once tried--at least in somebody's workshop. Has anybody every attempted to build an instrument out of a gramophone? Were there ever any attempts to put sound loops on a victor talking machine cylinder and add a few dozen extra needles to allow such a device to produce individual notes? Or....at the very least--has anyone played a gramophone by using a cylinder that has a single continuous sound and changing the playback speed to raise/lower the pitch?

I wouldn't be surprised, but having some experience in this area I don't think there's as much point as you might expect.

I set up something a long time ago with two arms/cartridges, which produced a very neat echo effect when you put the two stylii in the same groove (which wasn't as difficult as you might imagine). The results were good, but I could get better and more flexible results now with an echo machine. That was in 1980 and I've never gone back to it.

I also did what later became scratch technique, back in abut 1978, but more radically, changing the speed quite dramatically by disengaging the turntable mechanism and turning the turntable by hand while hand-selecting specific parts of a record. The results were `interesting.'

But ultimately you may as well use a sampler now. With a bit of imagination you can access a sound in different ways, and with today's samplers you can have very long samples. I did a `remix' of a Bollywood track by having the complete song as a sample and playing over a held note of the original song with other samples of parts of it at different speeds. It worked very well and I don't know why other people haven't done that. I also used a similar method to produce an album length version of a two minute piece by Eno. It's excellent, to my ears, and I play it a lot.

You may find Roland's Time Trip Pad idea useful. Also there are instruments like Yamaha's DJX keyboards, which I haven't used but which may be worth exploring.

But when you're working with records you'll always have the problem that scratch DJs have. It's an effect, but there's no possibility for subtlety of expression, and the chances of really making music instead of mere noise are pretty slim.

Ultimately there are massive possibilities with today's samplers, but hardly anyone seems to realise the fact. I've thought about starting a sampling website to encourage exploration, but I don't have the time to do it at the moment.

[Unfiltered]

Oh how I wish--I wish--I wish Moog would pick up where instruments like the Birotron/Optigan and definitely the Mellotron left off.

I agree the trons/chamberlins are badass (BTW check out somebody just sold a Chamberlin M1 for more than $10000 on ebay) and I love the sound of tape, I have 2 machines and want a mellotron bad, but, as much as it pains me to say, tape is as dead as Quaaludes. There are only 2-3 companies making tape now, and very very few models of only 2 track machines being made. Although there are quite a few companies rebuilding machines, like JRF magnetics, Sprague, and one I just found, MDI precision Motor works (they will rebuild an Ampex ATR 100 to 1 inch 2 track!) It hurts me that tape is dying quite fast, but hopefully digital will catch up soon. Also, hopefully somebody will ressurect LaserDisc audio, which is analog optical, like the Optigan but better.