Montag, 22. Mai 2006, 17 Uhr Glockenhaus, Glockenstraße in Lüneburg

Workshop about the Lyricon by Jorrit Dijkstra




The Lyricon is a beautifully made and fantastic sounding synthesizer (if in good shape!), with all the dynamics and accuracy of a saxophone or clarinet. It can produce fat and funky bass lines, whistling flute tones, dirty moog sounds and barely audible pitches with great dynamics. It has to be treated with love and care, since not all the parts are still available, and Bill Bernardi is practically the only one who can repair it. He says: "I tried at least a hundred different materials for the membrane of the transducer, to find the perfect one. It's not rubber, it's some sort of fiber. When you don't play the Lyricon for a long time, the membrane gets hard and needs to be replaced. I have plenty of them, I stocked up for years on them. The photo cell is very hard to get too, they don't make them anymore, I bought all of the ones I could still find."

Soon after the introduction various jazz and fusion musicians like Sonny Rollins, Roland Kirk, Wayne Shorter and Tom Scott started experimenting with it, not always with the most succesful artistic results. Bill Bernardi says: "Roland Kirk spent 12 days with me to learn the instrument. He drove up from NY with some other musicians. I made 2 consoles onto one body and mounted braille onto the keys. Beautiful guy. Stan Getz wanted me to give him one for free, but I refused. I felt he had just pay like everyone else..."

"For years nobody was interested in the Lyricon but these days I get all the calls from Berklee kids who have a WX7 and an EWI, because Michael Brecker plays it. They've heard about the Lyricon and want to know what it is."