-What is a Lyricon? The Lyricon is an analog electronic wind synthesizer. The Lyricon was invented by Bill Bernardi and Roger Noble of Computone Inc, in Massachussetts in the early 1970’s. Three models were built: The original Lyricon I (additive synthesis, one oscillator split into different overtones), the Lyricon Driver (to be connected to an external analog synthesizer through Control Voltages), and the Lyricon II (with two oscillators, filter and LFO). No MIDI functionality was added, because MIDI didn’t exist yet. Later MIDIfication modules were developed by JL Cooper and STEIM, but never worked very well. Of the Lyricon I, about 200 units were hand made, and about 2000 units of the Driver and the Lyricon II were manufactured by Computone.
-Why is the Lyricon such an expressive instrument? The Lyricon reacts to wind pressure (the harder you blow, the louder the sound), lip pressure (for pitch bend and vibrato) and of course to changes in pitch by fingering. The body is modeled after the fingerings of the saxophone, with a few clarinet-like keys, and two octave keys (additional octave up and down switches are available through a foot pedal). Some people call it the synthesizer that is closest to the human body, because of these three control parameters (most keyboards only have two), and because of the fact that it works with (continuous) control voltages, rather than MIDI. The MIDI protocol works in small steps (zeros and ones), resulting in less fluent controls for wind and lip.
-How is it different from the EWI or WX7? Don’t confuse the Lyricon with either the EWI (made by Akai) or the Yamaha WX5 or WX7. These are MIDI-based electronic wind instruments, invented after the Lyricon, capable of doing very different things (such as sounding like a string orchestra or drum machine). The MIDI-based Yamaha WX7 was modeled after the design of the Lyricon, which is one of the reasons the Lyricon lost in the small market of wind synthesizers in the 1980’s. Unlike the WX7 and other midi controllers, all Lyricon models incorporate the mechanical key action of an acoustic instrument.
-What is the difference between the Lyricon I and the Lyricon II or Lyricon Wind Driver? Originally, when Bernardi invented the Lyricon I he modeled the control voltages for pitch after the overtone series, which meant an exponential increase of voltage for each octave. But other analog (modular) synth manufacturers such as Moog, ARP and Oberheim used a linear approach of 1 volt per octave. Bernardi received many requests to make the Lyricon compatible with other analog synths. Thus he invented the Lyricon Driver, which could be paired with these synths, and later the Lyricon II, which had it’s own two-oscillator analog synth built in. So the Lyricon I is NOT compatible with the Driver and the Lyricon II, and can NOT be used in conjunction with other analog synths. Only the Lyricon Wind Driver and the Lyricon II are.