Note event handling for theremini?

[Gordon Charlton]

Happy Impending Birthday to you, and I hope a certain present makes its appearance!


Cheers, and hope your Birthday is a Happy one!

SG

No longer impending. I did! It is!

[synthguy]

Congrats Gordon, and welcome to the Theremini party!
Looking forward to your contributions and creativity on this new instrument....

[Gordon Charlton]

Well, yesterday I looked at very short delays, following up on my comb filter comment above. The delay wasn't really designed with that in mind, so it's on the edge of glitchiness and full of all sorts of interesting sonic things. Very old school industrial/futurist "art of noise" sounds. It also highlighted a weakness in the iPad editor - tiny changes in the delay time make massive changes in the sound, and those knobs in the editor make precise changes very tricky. Nonetheless I found something I liked, and made a little recording.

https://soundcloud.com/beat-frequency/voidoid

I found a purpose for transpose, other than arpeggios - rather than cram the full pitch range of the instrument into the pitch field I gave myself three octaves to play with and used the transpose knob to change which three octaves were available to me whilst playing. As with the delay, a custom interface would give better control over this. I also *think* that transpose might be transposing filter settings as well as pitch, but I'm not certain.

Another candidate for a better user interface is the Advanced/Volume Antenna/Volume knob, which appears to affect the response of the volume antenna in this way. Below 100% it reduces the maxmum volume available, spreading out the low volume area of the volume field to permit fine control whilst playing pianissimo. Above 100% does not increase the maximum volume but does bring max vol closer to the volume antenna, making the response snappier and more suitable for staccato playing.

I am finding that the volume field is rather snappy anyway, so for legato I hover my open hand at the loudest I want to play and dip a single finger down towards the loop to reduce the volume in a controlled fashion.

I have read that inverting the volume field (putting your hand far from the loop when it says to put it close during calibration and putting it far from the loop when it says to put it close) helps to give a smoother, less snappy response, and it does work, but I worry about snapping my hand towards the loop to play a loud stacatto note as I get rather enthusiast at times and don't really want to slap the instrument accidentally while I'm playing it.

Adjusting the volume knob whilst playing is tricky - another fail for the iPad app user interface I'm afraid. Three buttons would be better - pianissimo mode (say 50% on the volume knob) regular mode (100%) and stacatto mode (2000%) or something like that.

[d'ni]

Gordon wrote:....as I get rather enthusiast at times and don't really want to slap the instrument accidentally while I'm playing it.
Never mind, slapping it!

The volume side is a strange behaving thing. Definitely NOT like a etherwave. I still don't get, why it's so smooth in reversed mode?
Also calibrating the volume for the reversed mode like, placing the hand real far, or step back 1.5m, when asked for close position and then placing the hand about 20/25cm above, when asked for far hand.EDIT:not sure if the filter tricked me on the following:(gives like a zero-beat zone for the volume! From far to close: smooth rise, silent, fast rise.)
Also made a observation with the previous mentioned app TouchOSC, using two leds for the incoming antenna signals: the one for the volume goes just on/off and the one for the volume brightens up to full as the pitch rises. ODD.

Btw.: TouchOSC was a very nice hint. Thanks for that one.

[Gordon Charlton]

The volume circuit has poor linearity - the field is very compressed near the volume loop, just like with the pitch rod. Inverting the field puts the pianissimo zone on the outside of the field where is is less compressed, so better suited to sensing small changes.

Why this is, is a matter of speculation. My guess is that most of the R&D budget went on the digital side and they used cost saving oscillator circuits for the theremin side of things, with the idea that they could fix it in software, as they have, to some extent, with the pitch field. Hopefully the volume response will be addressed in a similar way.

It is still a bit baffling, considering that reports about the open.theremin.uno (the other digital hybrid theremin) are very positive about the antenna linearity and that was developed without the power of Moog behind it. Oh, well.

Funnily enough, the volume loop on Moog's flagship Etherwave Pro was also rather snappy. The standard explanation (*) is that they rushed to release the ePro knowing of this, and Bob never got to fixing it before he sadly passed on. Fortunately Thierry Frenkel did produce an excellent mod that fixed this, but I am very sure he has little to know interest in doing the same for the theremini.

(*) That's the standard explanation. It is also possible that the advising thereminist for the project, Pamelia Kurstin (now Stickney) did not see it as a problem - she is noted for her staccato technique (called "walking bass" by everyone except Pamelia) so may have considered it desirable.

[rkram53]

I hooked up a Behringer foot pedal (FCB 1010) to the iConnect4+ (along with iPad) and use one of the expression pedals for CC7 volume from about 50-127. I find that MIDI controlled volume has a greater range than using the volume antenna alone (at least to my ears). Haven't tried the inversion technique yet. Love not having to use a computer with that iConnect4+.

Not much difference in volume from 0 to 50 or so it seems, so I use my left hand to control volume from mute to around the min pedal setting and then use the pedal to get the more expression volume to max (seems a much better p-f shaping is possible that way). Maybe a bit silly, but it seems to give me a very acceptable expressive volume range.

And the Behringer FCB has two expression pedals so I can use the other one for controlling some other parameter (and of course change expression pedals with the stomp buttons).

Also can free up my left hand completely for the ipad if I just want to use the foot pedal for volume.

[Gordon Charlton]

Pedal for volume, antenna for pitch, control panel for other things.

That's basically a Kowalski system theremin.