Berna 1.0 User Manual
Berna 1.0 User Manual
Berna 1.0 User Manual
Between the 1950s and the mid 1960s, long before Ro- equipment was built from scratch cannibalizing
bert Moog and Wendy Carlos injected electronics into anything that had wires, tubes and pots, more rarely, the
pop-music (with a few exceptions like the Barrons and studios used the few commercial instruments available
Raymond Scott), electroacoustic music was pioneered by in those days, such as the Melchord, the Trautonium and
european radio laboratories and US universities. Com- the Theremin. Contrarily to what happens today, elec-
posing with tapes and electronics was a serious painsta- tronic music in those days was everything but fast and
king and expensive affair, prerogative of a restricted elite easy to create. A few minutes of electronic composition
of contemporary music composers and adventurous could take more than one year of work. Everything was
sound engineers. At that time there wasn’t any electronic handmade, from complex timbres with multiple sine
musical instruments market, as a matter of fact, most of oscillators bounces (no keyboard was used), to tape edi-
the equipment was adapted from scientific tools belon- ting with scissors and scotch-tape. Even sound envelopes
ging to radio engineering departments. Sometimes the were manually built by cutting tapes’ edgdes at different
degrees of inclination. Ussachevsky’s ADSR was yet to be Certainly Wendy Carlos would have never recorded
invented! Switched on Bach (at least with a Moog synthesizer) and
As it has been stated many times by musicologists, engi- this could have changed the whole history of modern
neers and composers, technologies had always a funda- music. On the other side, what if Stockhausen never
mental role in electronic music; it is difficult to say whe- thought of multichannel performances? Aestethics and
ter technology had shaped music aestethics or vice versa. technology are linked togheter in modern music much
I believe both things are true. Let’s take for example more than we realize, wheter we listen to Daft Punk or
Moog synthesizers and keyboards. Before releasing his Henry Pousseur.
first commercial synthesizer, Robert Moog asked to Vla-
dimir Ussachevsky his opinion on placing a piano-key- Another interesting point lies in the limitations of
board into the design. Ussachevsky didn’t agree. He technology. From the very beginning (let’s say for
thought that the keyboard would have limited the use of example Edgar Varése theories), composers and musi-
the synthesizer. Nevertheless Moog choosed to follow cians had always dreamed to push the limits of techno-
his istincts. But what would have happened if he didn’t? logy further and further ayay in order to obtain a total
freedom of expression. This is the same dream that every there everytime in any software. They could have avoi-
software and hardware company had pursued (and sold) ded to save their work while using their favourite softwa-
from the advent of the electronic musical instruments res, but they didn’t, just because that technology was
market. But what about intentionally placing some li- right there. In other words, ideas do not necessarily came
mits? When I didn’t include SAVE and LOAD functions from the absence of limits. Sometimes limits push you to
in Gleetchlab, a lot of people asked me why, for God’s think in a different way. This come to my mind again
sake, I was doing such an incomprehensible choice in the recently while listening to Bruno Maderna’s electronic
digital era. The reason was pretty simple and somehow music. At a certain point I’ve asked myself what would
revolutionary: by erasing a granted technology (to save happen if modern musicians could use a late fifties elec-
and load pacthes) I’ve placed people in a (paradoxically) tronic music laboratory? Beside the technological gap
groundbreaking situation. Basically I’ve forced them to there is a substantial difference between that and a
start from scracth everytime they run the software, just bunch of early seventies commercial synthesizers (like
like any analog equipment. Many people were grateful Moog, Arp, Ems, Korg and so on) and that is aesthetics.
and feel inspired by that. Of course such possibility was Early electronic music composers weren’t interested in
keyboard (which leads to traditional) approach, they the point then, in programming a simulation (more or
wanted to compose music by sculpting the sound from less accurate, because any digital process is a numerical
within. (and they had fery few instruments to do so). approximation of reality) of such archaic musical
They wanted to articulate masses of sound, understand equipment? The answer is twofold. The first is that I’m
sound, get rid of fixed intervals, dig and manipulate so- curious to hear what today’s musicians could do with it. I
und in its smallest elements with scientific precision. do not expect people making serial music in 2009
That is why they preferred to manually tune oscillators (however it would be interesting to hear some), instead I
instead of playing them on a keyboard. No need to say think that many could came up with fresh new ideas,
that such equipment looks prehistoric compared to a stimulated by the radical differences between Berna and
Minimoog. Sound laboratoryes of the late fiftyes lack of the modern electronic music tools. This is a sort of expe-
many of the well known devices you can find in any riment and I encourage every Berna user to send me
synthesizer produced from 1971 to nowadays. No enve- music files of their work. Another good reason is that
lopes, no control voltage, no modulation busses, not to this software may be useful to academy students that
talk of very basic waveforms and modulations. What is want to take a closer look to serial and tape music wit-
hout having to learn complex softwares like Max/MSP, As a final note to this preface I need to clearly state that
PD or C-Sound. Of course much of the possibilityes of this software is not intended to emulate a vintage sound.
Berna can be found elsewhere in many softwares, howe- You will not hear a simulation of digitally aged oscilla-
ver, this application contains everything1 you need to tors, filters and tape compression. This is a serious lear-
produce and study such music syntaxis and the layout is ning and creative tool for musicians who want to explore
a good approximation of what you could have found in the way of the early days of electronic music.
the Cologne’s WDR or Milan0’s RAI Phonology Studio.
Giorgio Sancristoforo
Milan, October 21st, 2009
1 Except tape editing. For that you will need a DAW like Cubase, Nuendo, Logic, Protools, Soundtrack and the like...
IN DEMO MODE THE SOFTWARE WILL RUN FOR 8
MINUTES
The Berna user interface is very simple. It has been desi- On the top right you can find also:
gned with the intent of emulating the layout of an old 1) An ON/OFF switch: turns Berna’s Audio ON or OFF
electronic music studio. There are 5 different kind of 2) Matrix: the patchbay of the studio
tools in it: 3) Audio Options: a window where you can set your so-
und card preferences
1) Generators 4) Authorization: to unlock the DEMO MODE.
2) Sound processors 5) The pattern grid
3) Signal monitoring tools 6) Load pattern button
4) Tape recorders 7) Save pattern button
5) Mixer
The pattern grid is a simple straightforward way to store Record & Play functions on tape players are not stored.
and recall 30 patterns (and you can save them all on your
mac). To save all your presets on your hard drive press SAVE,
a save dialog will open.
The use is very simple: to store a pattern shift+mouse To load them… well, press LOAD
click a dot. To recall a pattern mouse click a dot. White
dots are clean patterns. Red dots are stored patterns. A
blue dot is the current recalled pattern.
Stored patterns can be overwrited.
You can store any setting of Berna, except what files have
been loaded into the tape players. You will have to load
them manually from the tape players.
CHAPTER 3 MATRIX
The Matrix is the most important feature to understand To hear audio coming from the oscillators or processors,
how Berna works. The Matrix makes Berna a modular you must patch signals to one of the mixer channells.
software. Instead of using graphical patch cords, a matrix Only the 4 tape recorders can play without having to be
is a simple and clean way to route all processor ins and patched (although it is possible), from the mixer routing
outs. Remember: OUTPUTS are on TOP of the grid, options.
INPUTS are on the left of the grid.
All the signals in the matrix are MONO.
WITHOUT PATCHING THE The only stereo signals in Berna are the Mixer’s
MATRIX YOU CAN’T HEAR OR RECORD MASTER FADER and the 4 tape recorders output (when
ANYTHING! not patched to the matrix) in the MIXER.
In the example here, two oscillators are patched each one
to two variable band pass filters. The filters’ output then
is patched to mixer’s channel 1 and 2. The yellow arrows
show clearly the routing path of Oscillator 1
2
Lo studio di Fonologia, un diario musicale 1954-1983 - Ricordi Publishing Milano 2009 - pag53
While this settings are an important historical informa- USE THIS IF YOU WANT TO HEAR
tion, I’ve decided to include a very precise frequency THE 9 OSCILLATORS!
display (to the 5th decimal). This is not just a display,
frequencyes can be setted in the oscillator by clicking
1 2 3 4 5
and dragging the mouse on it (if you point the mouse on
a decimal number you will obtain a very fine tuning) or
with the computer’s keyboard. With this method all the
9 oscillators can output any frequency
between 0 and 20.000 Hz.
White noise signal has equal power in any band of a Noise can be filtered and refined to sound like such things as
given bandwidth. For example the band between 50 and the wind and the ocean, and is a rich source of background
100 Hz has the same energy of the band between 500 sound and texture for the composer of electronic music3
and 550Hz.
Pink noise signal has equal power in bands that are pro-
portionally wide. For example the band between 50 and
100Hz has the same energy of the band between 1000
3 Electronic and Experimental Music by Tom Holmes - Routledge Publishing - 1985 - pag 17
The beat oscillator is a sinusoidal oscillator that can be All in all this is a sine oscillator modulated by an LFO
frequency modulated by a sawthoot/triangle waveform. with FM technique.
RAI Phonology Studio had one built by Bruel&Kiaer. It
was originally used to demodulate radio signals.
The Tone Burst Generator is (once again) another piece This version of the TBG will be soon updated.
of equipment borrowed from radio laboratoryes. Its The General Radio Company TBG 1398A had a second
function in the electronic studio is comparable to a ti- signal input that triggers the TBG. I’m working to make
med audio gate. When feeded with a signal, the TBG will this TBG working almost the same way.
open and close accordingly to the two time parameters.
The Selective BPF was used mostly with the noise gene-
rators to obtain a “lively” sinewave. The noise in con-
junction with this machine created a flute like tone, not
as static (in amplitude) as the one produced by the sine
4
Evoluzione dei mezzi tecnici per la musica elettronica - Alfredo Lietti - 1959
The Octave Filters are 6 band pass filters in parallel, each
one with its own amplitude control.
The cutoff frequencyes have been copyed from the Liet-
ti’s Octave Filters used at RAI in 19565 .
The filters here have a 24dB/Oct slope. Please note I was
not able to trace the original slope of these filters.
5 Gli impianti tecnici dello studio di fonologia musicale di radio Milano - Alfredo Lietti
The Ring Modulator was a very common sound modifier
at that time. This one has just two controls, one for the
carrier signal’s amplitude and one for the modulator
signal’s amplitude.
6 Evoluzione dei mezzi tecnici per la musica elettronica - Alfredo Lietti - 1959
Just like the device before, the Dynamic Modulator was
designed by Alfredo Lietti for the RAI sudio. The scope
of this device is to apply the envelope of a signal to
another one. We call this envelope follower, today.
2 7
3 4 5 6
CHAPTER 8 THE MIXER fader, or to the matrix.
The mixer is pretty simple. If you need to play 2, 3 or 4 tape players at once in sync,
There are 8 mono channels coming from the matrix. you can use the SYNC PLAY FUNCTION.
Each one has PAN, Reverb Send, Tape Echo Send. Select the Tape Players you want to run in sync and then
press “>” (Play) or “S” (Stop).
In the center there is a red Master Fader of the 8
Channels. You can send the mix to one of the four
tape recorders. On the right of the Master Fader
there are the Reverb and Tape Echo returns chan-
nels.
Analog days - The invention and impact of the Moog NOISE/MUSIC - A HISTORY
synthesizer - by Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco by Paul Hegarty
Harvard University Press 2002 Continuum 2008
Electroacoustic music: The first Century Electronic and experimental music by Tom Holmes -
by Herbert A. Deutsch Routledge, 2002
Belwin Mills 1993
Oscillator 9 Frequency CH1 CC17 Tone Burst Close time CH1 CC35
Oscillator 9 Range CH1 CC18 Tone Burst Open time CH1 CC36
Oscillator 9 Volume CH1 CC29
VarBPF1 HPF CH1 CC37
Noise Generator Volume CH1 CC19 VarBPF1 LPF CH1 CC38
Noise Gen. White/Pink CH1 CC20 (126/127) VarBPF2 HPF CH1 CC39
VarBPF2 LPF CH1 CC40
Selective BPF Frequency CH1 CC106
Octave filters 1 vol CH1 CC41 Dyn Mod Delay CH1 CC51
Octave filters 2 vol CH1 CC42 Dyn Mod Input Vol CH1 CC52
Octave filters 3 vol CH1 CC43 Dyn Mod Control CH1 CC53
Octave filters 4 vol CH1 CC44
Octave filters 5 vol CH1 CC45 Frequency Shifter CH1 CC54
Octave filters 6 vol CH1 CC46
Amplitude modulator CH1 CC55
Ring Mod Car Vol CH1 CC47
Ring Mod Mod Vol CH1 CC48 Square Osc Range CH1 CC56
Square Osc Duty CH1 CC57
Amp Sel Threshold CH1 CC49 Square Osc Volume CH1 CC58
Amp Sel rel. time CH1 CC50 (126/127) Square Osc Frequency CH1 CC59
Plate reverb time CH1 CC60 Mixer CH3 Fader CH1 CC65
Tape Echo Time CH1 CC61 Mixer CH3 Pan CH1 CC80
Tape Echo FBK CH1 CC62 Mixer CH3 Rev Send CH1 CC88
Mixer CH3 TE Send CH1 CC96
Mixer CH1 Fader CH1 CC63
Mixer CH1 Pan CH1 CC78 Mixer CH4 Fader CH1 CC66
Mixer CH1 Rev Send CH1 CC86 Mixer CH4 Pan CH1 CC81
Mixer CH1 TE Send CH1 CC94 Mixer CH4 Rev Send CH1 CC89
Mixer CH4 TE Send CH1 CC97
Mixer CH2 Fader CH1 CC64
Mixer CH2 Pan CH1 CC79 Mixer CH5 Fader CH1 CC67
Mixer CH2 Rev Send CH1 CC87 Mixer CH5 Pan CH1 CC82
Mixer CH2 TE Send CH1 CC95 Mixer CH5 Rev Send CH1 CC90
Mixer CH5 TE Send CH1 CC98 Mixer CH5 TE Send CH1 CC101
Mixer CH6 Fader CH1 CC68 Mixer Master Fader CH1 CC71
Mixer CH6 Pan CH1 CC83
Mixer CH5 Rev Send CH1 CC91 Mixer Reverb Return CH1 CC72
Mixer CH5 TE Send CH1 CC99 Mixer Tape Echo Return CH1 CC73
Mixer CH7 Fader CH1 CC69 Mixer Tape 1 Return CH1 CC74
Mixer CH7 Pan CH1 CC84 Mixer Tape 2 Return CH1 CC75
Mixer CH5 Rev Send CH1 CC92 Mixer Tape 3 Return CH1 CC76
Mixer CH5 TE Send CH1 CC100 Mixer Tape 4 Return CH1 CC77
Tape 1 speed CH1 CC102
Mixer CH8 Fader CH1 CC70 Tape 2 speed CH1 CC103
Mixer CH8 Pan CH1 CC85 Tape 3 speed CH1 CC104
Mixer CH5 Rev Send CH1 CC93 Tape 4 speed CH1 CC105
AKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Tim Kahn,
Ludwig Kuckartz,
Giuseppe Cordaro,
Francesco Mulassano