[microsound] re: behold the Birotron

[ニコラス・ケント <ndkent@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Actually there's a good lesson to be learned there aside from any  
mechanical or business considerations.

One of the most important factors in how we recognize the sound of a  
musical instrument is contained in the attack portion of a played  
sound. A synthetic instrument can have anything complex or simple  
there of course.  But when considering acoustic sounds the vast  
majority of what we associate as musical instruments have something  
complex and different going on briefly at the start. There will  
almost always be a momentarily different harmonic structure and  
frequently a short change in pitch compared to the sustained body of  
the sound. Generating an envelope function is simply not going to (re) 
create this portion of the sound and a filter can add what's not  
there if you just have looped sound like a Birotron.

A cello with no attack portion of the sound doesn't sound much like a  
cello or arguably very interesting either. Thats not to say the  
Mellotron which did include the attack is anywhere near perfect. It I  
think in most people's opinion will sound more like a cello, though  
the fact that every time the same note is played sounds the same  
doesn't help it.

As one might guess, the digital solution widely used was to digitally  
smoothly splice a short attack sound onto a sustained waveform loop.  
A few rare instruments like a harpsichord  have a major change in  
sound on note release, so that may or may not be taken into account  
too. You still have issues of the timbre being the same each time the  
note is played, but it's still a step ahead of the Briotron.

Though I guess a lot of the charm of the original technology is it's  
being slightly unreliable so long as it functions. I'm sure many  
sound designers including commercial ventures would love to get a  
chance to sample one of these. But whatever flaws there are get  
captured like a snapshot and won't change. The thrill and frustration  
in playing this kind of old technology is if you are lucky enough  
that it's fairly playable it's in a constant flux of (hopefully)  
small changes. 

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