A brief musical history.............
Born in Manchester, UK 1947 I became interested in electronics as a child in the mid fifties making radios and other electronic projects.
My first musical instrument was a home made electric guitar and valve amplifier made
in 1960. I played guitar in my first band at school 1962 and then in and around the
Manchester area during the Beatles led Mersey beat era. Following that I took a telecoms
apprenticeship with the Post Office, played guitar in all kinds of bands doing various
types of cover versions in clubs, discos, hotels, restaurants etc. We did some support
work too for named artists of the time. Then I got involved with electronic music
around 1972-
In 1977 I moved to the North East to work at Durham University as an electronics technician developing their new electronic music studio. In my spare time I was involved in creating a five piece band called “City Hearts” This was the first band where I switched entirely to synthesiser. In the top picture left to right are Lawrence (guitar), Wanda (vocals) Phil (Bass) and me (synthesiser). John the drummer is unfortunately not shown well. The annual festival was organised by the local musician’s collective I was loosely involved with, which did a huge amount to promote talented bands in the North East area.
From the remnants of this, Phil and I later formed “Out of Control” a unique rock duo. It was based around 3 modular synthesisers, guitar, vocals and electronic percussion controlled by a unique microprocessor based sequencer/synthesiser which I had designed and built. The microprocessor interactively sequenced all the basic rhythmic backing control patterns for the synthesiser and electronic percussion during the gig. Phil, was the front man, switching from bass to lead guitar and vocals plus a pedal board. He also wrote the songs which we jointly arranged. We must have easily been the first band in the UK to employ a computer as a ‘band member’. Today, over 30 years later, it’s quite normal to perform with a computer generated backing track. Computers are everywhere today!
About Ron Berry...
The duo was a huge turning point for me. We just gelled from the start. I enjoyed working with Phil on this more than I can say. We gigged regularly and we even managed to get a resident gig at a local pub alternating with a young up and coming band called “Prefab Sprout” who we became good friends with. It was a great experience I will never forget. I owe Phil a great deal.
After OOC I produced my first electronic music album, “Where Dark Forces Meet”, released on cassette on the independent “Flowmotion” label run by Ian Dobson and Gordon Hope. Clive Littlewood’s “Electronical Dreams” magazine did much to promote the album and handle the sales for me
From the success of this I really wanted to develop my own electronic rock music
live, so I concentrated on expanding the sequencer to produce programmable interactive
polyphonic control patterns. I added a Godwin string synth so I could produce a full
sound playing solo. I did this for a while as the picture left shows. Using this
system the first really big gig I did was supporting “Hawkwind” at the “ UK Electronica”
event in Milton Keynes. By this time I was composing the third album “Osiris”. I
met Kevin Raddy at this gig and he did the wonderful art work for the original LP
version of “Osiris” released by “Projects UK” (previously the much admired “Spectro
Arts”) based in Newcastle-
In concert at the “Sheffield Octagon”, with Esme Ryder circa. 1984
After the LP record “Osiris” I did with “Projects UK”, I again developed the synthesiser much further by exploring the new field of “acoustic modelling” (see acoustic modelling section of this site) but uniquely using special analogue modules I had designed. With this setup I gigged occasionally up to around 1988.
Then a big mortgage hit me causing a worrying shortage of funds. Panicking a bit this led me, in my spare time, to building some custom stuff commercially and then designing audio equipment for DACS Ltd. I also fortunately got an opportunity to do some video and TV/film soundtrack work for David Bellamy Associates Ltd. until it was sold off. Being busy I gave up gigging but continued to create my own projects and record my own electronic music whenever I could find the time. To date 17 solo albums are complete (see CD catalogue) plus the “OOC” album.
Now retired from full time work, future plans are to continue with new projects. I’m still working part time for DACS Ltd. freelance. This I hope will lead to some interesting projects. By the way there’s some stuff on me written by others on the links page.
Ron Berry circa 2011
“City Hearts” playing a small rock festival
Concert sound check “Sheffield Octagon”
Trying to remember or feel where the pedal board keys are just before the dry ice covers it!
Around 1983 I was introduced to Esme Ryder, an exceptionally talented singer, musician and actress. We also gelled and became close friends. I became her biggest fan. She could read poetry brilliantly too so I exploited this using her great ability to recite in musical time. The picture left is of us at the Octagon theatre Sheffield doing a track called “Yesterday Today and Tomorrow” during which she recites text from the “Egyptian Book of the Dead”.
Unfortunately there are no decent live recordings and we never did record a polished version of it....but I recently found a very early rehearsal tape. It was in pretty bad shape and breaks up at the end as oxide just shed all over the place but it is at least a record if us getting roughly the basic shape of it before we gigged with it. I managed to clean it up a bit but it’s far, far from perfect. Here it is in web friendly 320Kbit/s MP3 format for anyone who might be interested.....
MP3 of “Yesterday Today and Tomorrow” the track we were doing in the pictures opposite.