News: October  2024...

This web site contains, hopefully, some interesting information on my electronic music and my unique self designed and and built equipment that I’ve used to create it.  

 

Over the years I have both gigged and recorded  with this home designed and built equipment. It has greatly helped me create my own brand of electronic music. I’ve composed and recorded 15 albums, some of which have been released  by independent labels on  cassette and vinyl. They are now all available on my own label from this site as CDs or high quality FLAC & MP3 downloads.

 

“Out of Control” was a unique electronic duo I jointly formed in the late nineteen seventies with guitarist/song writer Phil Clogg. I used a 1MHz  Synertek “Sym1”, one of the first 8 bit microprocessor boards available in the UK to drive my extended modular synthesiser for live performances as an interactive ‘electronic third member’. The band   OOC story here.

 

In the eighties I extended this basic 2 output  8 bit DAC sequencing  project.  The RAM was increased to 16Kbyte and I used a 12bit multiplexed DAC to create 15 channels of sequenced CV output and 1 channel of 8 percussion triggers. With this I was able to do solo gigs. The first big outing I used it for was to support Hawkwind at a UK Electronica festival at Milton Keynes.

 

Also later in the eighties I pioneered  the basic physical modelling of several musical instruments in the analogue domain by designing some unique voltage controlled analogue delay line modules to add to my home-built modular analogue synthesiser. In the day the only work done in this area previously was by academics using their institution’s ‘exotic and expensive’ (for the time) main frame computers. Considering an analogue synthesiser is essentially an analogue computer I thought some basic modelling could be achieved cheaply and in a reasonable time with the addition of these special modules. Some say analogue still sounds the best so for a digital/analogue sound comparison along with examples of my early analogue models, I’ve digitally recreated them as closely as possible using Native Instruments Reaktor 4.  Details and many sound clips of both approaches can be found in the acoustic modelling section on the above navigation bar so you can make your own mind up. The patches are available at the bottom of this page, if you would like to try them out and have Reaktor

 

I hope you find something of interest here musically, technically or even historically.

 

  Best wishes,

 

            Ron.

[ By the way, if you find my music available for free or cheap anywhere else on the web, it’s either a second hand CD or more likely it’s  pirated !!!   Copyright to some means nothing I’m afraid. So if you have any respect the vast amount of effort, time and money artists spend practicing, creating and distributing their music, please don’t steal it!  For me, I am not rich, so without some kind of income  from music, it is increasingly harder to produce and distribute music].

Site designed & maintained by Ron Berry, 1st posted 2002;     last updated October 2024.

Site: General  Information...

 

REAKTOR DIGITAL ACOUSTIC MODELLING PATCHES...  String.zip (32KB, Gong.zip (61KB), Brass.zip (17KB,  Wind.zip (36KB). See acoustic modelling section for details of what these free patches contain.

A web site promoting the unique electronic music of Ron Berry; an English musician who builds and designs his own synthesisers and recording equipment.

Cherry Red Records  release “Close to the Noise Floor” is still available from them. It’s a very impressive and massive 60 track 4 CD compilation exploring the origins of electronica in the UK. There’s a track of mine on CD3.
Where Dark Forces meet  was part of a boxed set of 8 Vinyl LPs released by VOD RECORDS called “British Cassette Culture Recordings”. It was my first  album  released on the “Flowmotion” label and is still available as single LP purchase. Here’s the link to it... Where Dark forces Meet Vinyl LP.

I’m still in the process of  working on the new studio room in the new house amongst other things, but I have managed to complete enough tracks of new music for an album with the room partially completed. Hopefully I’ll be in a position to release something before too long and I hope also winter will give me more time to work in my studio.