theremini as a general control surface

The Moog Forum Theremin Forum
1

Hello,

I recently acquired a theremini and am currently happily immersed in expoloring its myriad sonic possibilities. However, I’m also interested in using it as a gestural control surface to trigger and modulate other (not necessarily musical) devices by hooking up its midi functionaility to a pD or max/msp patch or arduino board. As I’m no expert in this area I’d like to know if, for example, the sweep of a quantized scale of notes on the theremini would be capable of relaying a different message for each note-step that could be interpreted as an instruction to turn a particular device (e.g. a video or sound file) on or off or to modulate it through a dsp patch. I’d be grateful for any advice on this question.

2

Hi canardlapin,

The easiest way to drive yourself crazy when experimenting with MIDI controllers and MIDI receiving devices is to rely solely on the written MIDI Specs or other people’s guesses.

Everything becomes so much easier when you can actually see and study the MIDI stream coming from your controller.

The best (and free) Mac app for this is MidiMonitor. And one app for PC that I know of is MidiOX. (PC folks, please chime in if you have better app suggestions.)

Once it’s set up, play the Theremini your way, using different Scales and Keys, and see for yourself what the MIDI output is.

It will then be much easier to decide how to use that data with a pD or max/msp patch or arduino board.