Mellotronists

--- In Mellotronists@yahoogroups.com, "charel196" <charel196@...> wrote:
>
> I haven't heard those Birotron samples on M-Tron but always thought the instrument 
was 
> hard to hear on record (see Wakeman's CRIMINAL RECORD & Yes' TORMATO) very bass-
ey 
> and distant sounding. I heard that Biro used 2 Mellotrons to make the 8 track tapes, so 
> you'd think that this potentially might've sounded good.
>  I assume one could create their own Birotron sounds by looping Mellotron samples then 
> lowering the fidelity (LP filter)
>


(I've posted this reply once already but I have not seen it show up in the group messages, 
so please forgive me if it does in fact show up twice.)


I didn't know there were any Birotron samples on the M-Tron!  Let alone any Birotron 
samples anywere to be had in any format.

I didn't know there were any Birotron samples on the M-Tron!

Here's my little personal story about my "brush" with the Birotron.

(Again, I'm 52 years old now and I'll put a "senior moment" disclaimer here at the 
beginning just in case anyone here thinks/knows I've got some of this wrong, but this is 
my recollection of the events at that time when I was around all this)

In 1976 I was playing at the Holiday Inn of Bridgeport, CT in the lounge with a "Show Band" 
that played covers of pop music with a Husband and Wife team as the leaders and Front 
persons/Vocalists of the band. 

 I came down to the club one afternoon to turn on all my keyboards and synths to let them 
"warm up" before rehearsal that day.  (My live setup at that time consisted of my Mellotron 
M400 [Brass/String Section/8-Choir tapes], Hammond B3/Leslie 145, Polyfusion Modular 
synthesizer (serial number 2), Moog Modular Synthesizer 12, Minimoog, ARP String 
Ensemble, Hohner Clavinet D6, RMI Electra-Piano and Harpsichord 368 and a Fender 
Rhodes 73 Electric Piano.)

When I went to turn on the Mellotron there was a little green business card on the 
keyboard of my tron, it said "Ed Cohen Sales-Birotronics, a div of Rick Wakeman 
Industries".

I was dumbfounded since I had just read in Keyboard Magazine that same week, that there 
was this "new" Mellotron type keyboard that had tape loops and could hold notes longer 
than 8 seconds etc.  What an odd coincidence I thought.  I just read about this thing and 
now there's a business card for this guy involved with it sitting on my Mellotron.

Apparently Ed Cohen also managed a band named Whisper that did covers of Yes, Genesis 
and many of the prog artists of the era, as well as original music in the same progressive 
vein.  When he saw my large setup for live performance, he thought he'd try to get me to 
audition for Whisper since they needed a keyboard/synth guy and I obviously had the right 
tools for the job.

So, I called the phone number and spoke to Ed Cohen.  He told me that "he was the 
manager of the Prog Rock band named "Whisper" which was based in New Haven, CT and 
was also the manager of a band with a keyboard guy named David Biro...you might have 
heard of him".  "He invented what was supposed to be the much improved Mellotron and 
he named it the "Birotron""

Ed then told me the following story about the Birotron....

Instead of using tapes that had a fixed length and starting point like the Mellotron, he 
decided to use the old "8-Track" cartridges so that the sounds could loop indefinitely 
unlike the Mellotron where you only have about 7-8 seconds of sound playing then you 
have to release the key on the keyboard so the return springs on the tape frame could pull 
the tape back to it's starting point.  

While he did get around the 7-second limitation, he introduced a new problem.  Because 
the Mellotron (and Chamberlin..the original tape replay keyboard the Mellotron idea was 
er.."borrowed" from…another story that I'm sure you all know on this forum...) was NOT a 
continuous loop, it could really play ANY sound because the tape ALWAYS starts at the 
exact same starting point.  Therefore, percussion sounds like the tubular bells, sound 
effects, like those that I have currently in my Mellotron Mark V, as well as the other sounds 
in the Mellotron library like drums, vibes, guitar strums etc. would ALWAYS give you that 
percussive "hit" at the beginning of the sound which is why the sounded so realistic...the 
Mellotron let you hear the hit of the mallet on every note, or the articulation of the choir 
voices "Ahh" at the beginning of the notes.
 
Ed went on to say that basically "David Biro was a musician that did not have the money to 
afford his own Mellotron, so he went to an auto junk yard, bought 37 8 Track car tape 
players, borrowed a friends Mellotron (excellent player-Jeff Batter, I don't know about 
anyone else's Mellotron being recorded but it's possible), recorded all the notes/tracks of 
the sounds in the Mellotron onto 8 Track tape cartridges and then used an old piano 
keyboard he hollowed out, put switches on the keys that would then trigger each of the 
different 8 track car tape decks to play the correct pitch.  Crazy huh?"
 
Well the story goes like this.  Ed Cohen, brought this monstrosity (I guess it was a huge 
thing with all the 8 tack car decks in some kind of box) to a Yes concert in New Haven, got 
Rick Wakeman to take a look at it, and convinced Wakeman to invest in David Biro's 
"invention" and try to market and sell it as the "better mousetrap" advanced version of the 
Mellotron.
 
As I said earlier, he did get the sounds to play indefinitely, but the catch was, because you 
never knew where the tape was playing from since the 8 track cartridges were looped, you 
did not have that perfect attack of every possible type of sound that the Mellotron had.  
They did add a very limited Envelope Generator that had Attack and Decay, so you did 
have that, which was a good idea since on the Mellotron you really have to learn how to 
use your volume pedal to get smooth fades in and out and make it sound musical 
(Wakeman and Tony Banks were a few of the masters of that technique).
 
So while it did give you a perceived attack, it was never really as good as the Mellotron's 
(IMHO) ability to really give you the exact attack of ANY sound.  The Birotron did OK on 
stuff like strings, cello (still missing that initial bite, there too really) but I thought the 
attack of the Flute missing and the voices singing that first "Ahh" really diminished the 
realism of the great way the Mellotron flutes and vocals sound.
 
There were lots of mechanical problems with getting 8 track tapes to run consistent 
speeds when you had 37 of them running together, there were pitch problems I relating to 
I believe individual capstans (not totally sure about that but I remember something along 
that line) and the project never really got off the ground.
I know there were other business problems as well, (I heard rumors that it might have had 
to do with Wakeman's divorce, but I honestly don't know any details about that)  

I did see and hear Rick Wakeman use three or four Birotrons onstage in concert once and I 
thought they sounded terrible, at least what I could hear of them at all. Just like the 
previous poster "charel196" mentioned, I also thought it sounded "distant" and very 
"muddy".  I didn't think they came anywhere near sounding full and rich like the Mellotron 
did.  I wished he'd had Mellotrons at that show.
 
Many years later I told this story to David Kean, (who I had contacted when I was having 
problems with my Mellotron Mark V.  I finally met David Kean when I worked for E-mu 
Systems (Emu had a "after trade show" party at Dave Kean's studio when it was in North 
Hollywood, CA one year) and he had expressed an interest in getting his hands on a 
Birotron.  I told him that I did at one time have David Biro's phone number so I looked and 
found a very old phone book of mine that had David Biro's Mom's home phone number in 
CT.  At the time David Biro still lived there with his Mom.  Turns out that Dave Biro did 
have a Birotron still in his possession.  Dave Kean then called and thanked me.  He told me 
later that he bought David Biro's personal Birotron from him. Not sure what he paid for it.

Ironically, I heard from Ed Cohen over the past year and he mentioned that Dave Biro is 
living in Florida last he heard. 
Thru my relationship with Ed Cohen I eventually got to meet Rick Wakeman and Keith 
Emerson.  
I ended up demonstrating the Polyfusion Modular Synthesizers to both of them. Keith 
Emerson basically said, "he's never going to use anything other than Moog synths, due the 
relationship he had with Bob Moog. We took my entire Polyfusion Synth in multiple 
cabinets to Rick Wakeman's hotel room in New York, and he loved it so much he ordered a 
larger system based on what was in my personal system.
The problem was that Rick never paid for or took delivery of the system after they custom 
built it for him.  Talk about feeling stupid to the owners of Polyfusion.


Sorry for the length of the post and the off topics bit at the end regarding synthesizers

John