What is the Lyricon?
There were three Lyricon models manufactured by Computone, Inc., in the 1970’s. The original Lyricon I was a wind controller which drove a computer that generated overtones. It came with a deluxe plush lined case and had a shiny chrome finish and an elongated bottom piece. It used a form of additive synthesis, where you dial in the amount of overtones you want, and you could then blend that with the wind overtoned section. It had a key switch for a fundamental of G, Bb, C, Eb or F and a range switch of low, med or hi. Combined with two octave up keys, you had a functional 6 octave range. It also had glissando, portamento and “timbre attack”, which was sort of like chorusing. The sounds were very expressive and there was quite a bit of control over the actual sound. The down side was that, like early synths, there was no way to “save” a sound. So the first Lyricon players had to know the way the dials should be set for a sound, and hope they approximated those settings. Other problems i
There were three Lyricon models manufactured by Computone, Inc., in the 1970’s. The original Lyricon I was a wind controller which drove a computer that generated overtones. It came with a deluxe plush lined case and had a shiny chrome finish and an elongated bottom piece. It used a form of additive synthesis, where you dial in the amount of overtones you want, and you could then blend that with the wind overtoned section. It had a key switch for a fundamental of G, Bb, C, Eb or F and a range switch of low, med or hi. Combined with two octave up keys, you had a functional 6 octave range. It also had glissando, portamento and “timbre attack”, which was sort of like chorusing. The sounds were very expressive and there was quite a bit of control over the actual sound. The down side was that, like early synths, there was no way to “save” a sound. So the first Lyricon players had to know the way the dials should be set for a sound, and hope they approximated those settings. Other problems i
There were three Lyricon models designed by Bill Bernardi and manufactured by Computone, Inc., in the 1970’s. The original Lyricon I was a wind controller which drove a computer that generated overtones. It came with a deluxe plush lined case and had a shiny chrome finish and an elongated bottom piece. It used a form of additive synthesis, where you dial in the amount of overtones you want, and you could then blend that with the wind overtoned section. It had a key switch for a fundamental of G, Bb, C, Eb or F and a range switch of low, med or hi. Combined with two octave up keys, you had a functional 6 octave range. It also had glissando, portamento and “timbre attack”, which was sort of like chorusing. The sounds were very expressive and there was quite a bit of control over the actual sound. The down side was that, like early synths, there was no way to “save” a sound. So the first Lyricon players had to know the way the dials should be set for a sound, and hope they approximated th
