Hi list members,

And now for something completely different...

Earlier this week I was having dinner at a chinese restaurant and I noticed an ultrasonic movement alarm sensor in one of the corners. Everytime someone walked past it, a LED on the device was blinking. This gave me the idea to the following weird patch: a patch which reacts to movements. The patch generates a frequency of 18.7 kHz, which is sent directly to outputs 1 + 2. So your room is filled with a tone of 18.7 kHz, which most of us can't hear. (When I tried higher frequencies, the patch didn't work very well.) When you connect a microphone (via a mic. preamp) to the left Audio In of the Modular, the patch will react to anything moving in the room, because of the changing reflecting patterns of the 18.7 kHz tone.In this patch, the difference between the Ultrasonic oscillator and the signal from the microphone is detected. So when this difference changes because of movements and thus, changing reflections, an envelope generator is triggered. You'll have to adjust the sensitivity of the patch with knobs 3 and 18.

I tested this patch with an AKG C460 condensor microphone and a Sennheiser MD 421 dynamic microphone, and they both worked well, although you may have to adjust the sensitivity levels with knobs 3 and 18.

What the heck kind of monitors are you running in your studio? Just wondering...

I use just a pair of Tannoy M 15's. As most hifi speaker systems are capable of reproducing frequencies of up to 20 kHz, the 18.7 kHz from the Modular should be no problem.

Hi Kees,

Absolutely no offence meant ...

But ...

Have you noticed that there are some really WEIRD people on this list??!!!

Wow! I think you win the prize for most original use of the nord modular ever! That is sweet! There are some crazy-smart people on this list!

I'm curious about where you placed the mic... did you place it on axis with the speakers, facing toward them? This way, movement between the speaker and mic would act as the control. Or did you have the mic in between the speakers, facing the same direction they were facing? This would just pick up room reflections and movement about the room would alter (rather than interrupt) these reflections... this would be less binary than method 1, which seems a lot like noise gating, i.e., the nord makes no sound as long as audio is coming in from the mic, but when that level decreases, it triggers sound...

You get good results if you place the microphone somewhere near the speakers and point it into the room. In this way the microphone picks up mostly reflections.

Placement of the microphone is not really critical. This patch reacts on the phase difference between the signal of the ultrasonic oscillator and the reflections. You may have to adjust the sensitivity with knob 3 and 18.