Can someone offer me advice about how I can use my theremin to control other effects. I want to set up a rig where I can play yboard and control different effects in real time with the theremin. Any advices appreciated…r
whoops, I meant keyboard - not yboard..cheers
roland
there are numerous ways to do this on all platforms, usually using pitch-detection software. there are also some hardware solutions i believe, though i’m not as up on that stuff as i am the software solutions. personally, i use max/msp on the mac platform, and it includes a huge variety of tools for doing this kind of stuff, go to www.cycling74.com and read up on max. it’s not cheap and it’s quite deep, so be warned. however, it can do an amazing job for this kind of thing. i use my theremin as a video effects controller occasionally and it works great, as well as causing jaws to drop when i play it. while not exactly what you’re looking for, i also use an app called kantos (made by antares, the people who make autotune) which is a monophonic pitch tracking synth plugin. pretty amazing, though my one quibble is that it has a pitch ceiling that limits your ability to call all the dogs in the general neighborhood.
cheers
bruce
Thanks
It takes some strategy and understanding your effects and how and if they interface with the outside world as well as the outputs on your theremin (unless of course you want to get new effects).
First off your theremin is probably an all analog device. If you have that real expensive ethervox from the 1990s then you have a MIDI output that can definitely come in handy for effects with MIDI inputs.
The regular etherwave just has an audio output so as someone mentioned in a rather convoluted manner you could use a program or hardware to turn it into numbers and use them to conrtol more software or try to turn it into MIDI. Tell you the truth I keep thinking you probably would get better results if you got something more direct. Like the Alesis Aireffects box, maybe roland has something with their D-Beam? If you want to use MAX something digital to begin with might be better. There’s a bunch of people using game gloves and max. You still can probably get the p-5 glove blown out for under $20 and with some effort get that to control MAX or Reaktor, both of which can be programmed as effects processors
You might be lucky enough to have a theremin that puts out 2 voltages (like the etherwave pro or a few other brands). In that case you can plug them in to most gear that has control voltage inputs (like the moogerfoogers). Even some digital effects have a voltage pedal input (not the same thing as a footswitch). You are ready to go with 1 or 2 cables to connect your gear. You could also get a VCA from a modular synth builder and put it in your signal path to control the sound going in or coming out of anything with your theremin’s amplitude. Some MIDI slider boxes even have a pedal input with MIDI out. If you have one then you can use the MIDI to control something that uses MIDI