Joined: Apr 17, 2006 Posts: 2810 Location: New York
Audio files: 24
Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 1:09 pm Post subject:
Quote:
Just as an aside, the non-fretted string players use the varying width of the neck as part of their sensory feedback loop. I don't know if something tactile along those lines would be useful. But you may not always want to be looking at your... umm ... you know.
Precisely and once this feedback loop is established, then less conscious thought goes into playing the controller. It's all part of the brains "memory and prediction" model that goes on in it's 5-layer neo-cortex. A lower level of thinking gets established and recollection does not have to reach as high up in the cortex as when your learning something for the first time. That;s a whole other subject in itself and is fascinating to read about. Anyhow what I am saying is, one just "knows" where to put their thier .... umm ... you know .......... after repeated attempts
Joined: Dec 23, 2005 Posts: 4127 Location: Mount Hope, KS USA
Audio files: 96
Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 2:00 pm Post subject:
Well, the Appendage was designed for skinning cats, so there are a number of ways of doing things.
For example, even a simple 8 bit quantizer could set the intial note value, the bend voltage could be used for smooth, unquantized slides, and TFS could be even used to control the amount of modulation (unquantized), if the Appendage is in current mode.
That's what this patch would do - if the quantizer has a level input, that would set the range, otherwise one could pass the initial signal through a level control. The mixed output would provide the blend of quantized voltage, bend and modulation.
Mixed output could be used to connect to the filter for tracking, or one could put in the bend voltage, or use slide, or TFS for various filter control options (not to mention the whole EG control provided by gate and trigger output).
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I don't think I'd be interested in trying to tie down the position of any particular intervals. I've had a go at playing a theremin, and, although I'm definitely no virtuoso, I could play a tune, along to an accompanying bassline. I really liked the fact that absolute tuning was not really relevant. The life of the instrument was in the immediacy of playing. Being slightly out of tune, or overshooting a slide made it the very enjoyable playing style it is. If I want something to be perfectly in tune, I'll do it in my DAW. I'm thinking more and more that the imperfections of my analogue synth gear are what make it so great. So a method of playing which plays on this fact is even better IMHO. _________________ What makes a space ours, is what we put there, and what we do there.
Joined: May 04, 2007 Posts: 1734 Location: NM USA
Audio files: 54
Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 9:07 am Post subject:
Uncle Krunkus wrote:
I don't think I'd be interested in trying to tie down the position of any particular intervals. I've had a go at playing a theremin, and, although I'm definitely no virtuoso, I could play a tune, along to an accompanying bassline. I really liked the fact that absolute tuning was not really relevant. The life of the instrument was in the immediacy of playing.
That's pretty much how I look at it. I tried to play cello for a few years, and even though I never got any good, it was a real eye-opening experience to learn about the incredible amount of expressive control good players use. (For example, one violin method identifies 25 different bowing techniques!)
As with theremin, I think two control surfaces (or spaces) are really needed for the more classical types of musical expression. The softpots, etc. may be what will finally make this easy enough to actually try doing.
Does anyone have a favorite 2D sensor I could use for my "bow"?
Joined: Apr 17, 2006 Posts: 2810 Location: New York
Audio files: 24
Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 10:26 am Post subject:
Quote:
For example, even a simple 8 bit quantizer could set the intial note value, the bend voltage could be used for smooth, unquantized slides, and TFS could be even used to control the amount of modulation (unquantized), if the Appendage is in current mode.
Nice patch, sure this would work. To play new notes, one would have to poke at the ribbon for each new base note, but sure this would work. I like the use of TFS output for vibrato depth control. I would assume the VCA would be in linear mode of operation.
If one wanted to glide over a range of notes, the INIT could be replaced by the slide output. A simple 8 bit quantizer like the Blacet Miniwave could be used along with their Mixer/Processor for level set. I use these as example because I have these modules on hand and will be interesting to experiment with in the next prototype phase of the project.
Joined: Apr 17, 2006 Posts: 2810 Location: New York
Audio files: 24
Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 10:46 am Post subject:
Quote:
I don't think I'd be interested in trying to tie down the position of any particular intervals. I've had a go at playing a theremin, and, although I'm definitely no virtuoso, I could play a tune, along to an accompanying bassline. I really liked the fact that absolute tuning was not really relevant. The life of the instrument was in the immediacy of playing. Being slightly out of tune, or overshooting a slide made it the very enjoyable playing style it is. If I want something to be perfectly in tune, I'll do it in my DAW. I'm thinking more and more that the imperfections of my analogue synth gear are what make it so great. So a method of playing which plays on this fact is even better IMHO.
Interesting to hear different views on this subject. Me personally, if one is playing a some classic piece of music, written with specific notes in mind, on say a Theremin or Ribbon for that matter, I would like to hear the notes coming from the instrument to be as close as possible to the original piece. I realize that it will not be exact or "perfect" as you mention. I rather not, in this case, hear an out of tune version of a classic tune. It's part of the attraction of watching a very good Theremin or Ribbon player and to see an accurate rendition of the song being played and would be a major reason why I sat down to watch them in the first place. I have sat through many 100's of hours of electronic musical performances over the years and this has become my preference.
However, I am also a big fan of the abstract such as electro-acoustic and ambient electronic music, which is something these types of instruments are good at. Everyone gets the best of both worlds
Hey Bill,
I highly recommend (or not) you get hold of a copy of "Stars and Hank Forever" by The Residents.
The cover versions of Hank Williams are absolutely hauntingly beautiful, but it's the marching tracks of John Philip Sousa, played in obscure and often dynamically changing keys that I think would really make your skin crawl!
The wonderful thing is that the mood and vibrancy of the tunes is completely preserved. Even though the melody is exactly not what you know it should be. If you know what I mean. _________________ What makes a space ours, is what we put there, and what we do there.
Joined: Dec 23, 2005 Posts: 4127 Location: Mount Hope, KS USA
Audio files: 96
Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 3:40 pm Post subject:
Quote:
I really liked the fact that absolute tuning was not really relevant.
Well, then that makes this video almost forgivable. Actually, I think with practice (like any musical instrument) one could probably get pretty good at this. I'm nowhere near "pretty good", but this is sort of a first attempt at pitch control.
I certainly doubt it would be as difficult as a theremin.
I rest my case.
I mean,
How much more in tune would you want it?
Beautiful. _________________ What makes a space ours, is what we put there, and what we do there.
Joined: Dec 23, 2005 Posts: 4127 Location: Mount Hope, KS USA
Audio files: 96
Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 6:58 pm Post subject:
Quote:
I was not aware you were building one .......
For a minute there, I thought Bill had too much Thanksgiving Turkey tryptophan in his system, then I realized he was talking "case" rather than "Appendage" (Andy's a proto-build victim....er...tester for the Appendage). _________________ My Site
I'm completely confused now.
Didn't know I was building what?
Tryptophan?
You Northern Hemisphere types just like messing with my head don't you? _________________ What makes a space ours, is what we put there, and what we do there.
Joined: Dec 23, 2005 Posts: 4127 Location: Mount Hope, KS USA
Audio files: 96
Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 8:09 pm Post subject:
Quote:
Didn't know I was building what?
A case.
Quote:
Tryptophan?
Turkey is supposed to contain a large amount of tryptophan, which is a natural sedative. In truth, most meat contains quite a bit, but it's sort of a running joke on thanksgiving.....
Quote:
You Northern Hemisphere types just like messing with my head don't you?
I don't know why but that last video reminds of something from one of the first Anubian Lights albums, or maybe an early Pressurhead song with the guitars. All this does is make me more excited to build a couple of these. One for the Blacet, one for the pulse plus, one for the other modular cabinet... you get the picture!
The ability to play "in tune" or not will only make this controller more flexible!
Barry S.
I really liked the fact that absolute tuning was not really relevant.
Well, then that makes this video almost forgivable. Actually, I think with practice (like any musical instrument) one could probably get pretty good at this. I'm nowhere near "pretty good", but this is sort of a first attempt at pitch control.
I certainly doubt it would be as difficult as a theremin.
I tied to play cello like Ian and took lessons for 4 years.
I remember one day in class that I was very stressed because I didn't achieve to pitch correctly. I said it to my teacher and he said: Oscar, first imagine( listen inside) the note and then put the finger.
It worked. Awesome.
(playing cello you don't look at your hand)
It means that the body and the brain are a very good computer with very precise hardware. We can do more than we can expect. The matter is to know how.
Cello Vs appendage... Lets see... the neck of the cello is parallel to the body, the body of the cello is within your legs, the thumb of your left hand travel up and down of the cello's neck. Our brain, our body take automatically reference points, also, due a lot of repetitive movements. And hard study. So at last the hands must work automatically.
The appendage is perpendicular to the body and it is more far of our body andapparently there are not reference points...
Also there is the difference of the string logarithmic response and the appendage linear or logarithmic...
Only a thought. Last edited by Sound on Mon Dec 01, 2008 5:46 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Apr 17, 2006 Posts: 2810 Location: New York
Audio files: 24
Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 5:44 pm Post subject:
Quote:
You Northern Hemisphere types just like messing with my head don't you?
Sorry man, yes, I am fucking with your head ....... I think the New York air has fried my brain ..........
Oh wait, a lucid moment coming on ......
Shit, Andy, welcome to the Appendage TEAM BTW ....... !!!! How rude of me ....... seriously though, thanks for donating your time for the efforts. Soon, your soldering iron shall be smokin' !!
Scott, the documentation is just fantastic ............
Joined: Nov 05, 2008 Posts: 3 Location: new jersey
Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 8:57 pm Post subject:
Re: Appendage index scale.
THeff wrote:
I started playing it using Initial with some Bend mixed in and then switched to only Slide. Reason for that is, if you use Initial with some Bend mixed in the reference pitch points move. I mean, when you start playing a note and then slide up or down and try to come back to the original pitch, it's in a different spot. This is because of the added Bend voltage that wasn't there when you started.
maybe i'm confused, but why would these reference points move after bending? in theory, it's just adding and subtracting the slide voltage, so equal slide up and down should cancel out right? is it just not quite precise this way?
also on pg 28 of the documentation it says :
"Let’s say that pressure is applied at the 5V position on the ribbon. The Initial Voltage is at 5V and the Bend Voltage is at 5V."
it should read that the initial is 5V and SLIDE is 5V right? bend should be 0V?
I started playing it using Initial with some Bend mixed in and then switched to only Slide. Reason for that is, if you use Initial with some Bend mixed in the reference pitch points move. I mean, when you start playing a note and then slide up or down and try to come back to the original pitch, it's in a different spot. This is because of the added Bend voltage that wasn't there when you started.
Actually I should have said it this way: If you play a note and slide up or down from that note and them come back to the original position the Bend voltage will return to zero.
Where you notice the change is if you start on a certain note and then slide up to another note. The second note will wind up in a different place, than if you just touched the note.
As Scott mentioned though, this can be overcome just by practicing and getting the feel of the ribbon.
Joined: Dec 23, 2005 Posts: 4127 Location: Mount Hope, KS USA
Audio files: 96
Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 8:06 am Post subject:
Quote:
Very cool video! What all do you have patched together for that?
Thanks! Basically I had three Klee voices. One voice was sharing the same filter as the VCO controlled by the Appendage, and the Appendage was controlling the cutoff of that filter with the Initial and TFS voltages. The Appendage voice EG was also controlling the cutoff. So, the initial note value would open or close the filter depending on the initial position, and TFS would open it up more, allowing not only the Appendage-controlled VCO through, but also the one voice controlled by the Klee.
Then, trigger input of the Appendage EG was driven by one of the trigger outputs of the Klee, so voice would always play in rhythm with the Klee. The gate output of the Appendage was connected to the gate input of the same EG, so when there was pressure on the Appendage, it would hold the filter open more.
So, the lower the note, the lower the initial voltage, the more subdued the filter. The higher the initial note, the more the filter opened, the more bright the filter. Then the TFS and EG would act on it at those initial points, not only affecting the Appendage VCO, but the one voice controlled by the Klee as well.
The video started out with the Klee in external range mode, which was fed a fast LFO with a DC offset. So, that modulated the Klee voices pretty heavily. Then, halfway through, I switched the Klee to range 6, which calmed it down for the second half.
Quote:
maybe i'm confused, but why would these reference points move after bending?
If you're using the mixed output, you can set the amount of "slide" (using the "bend amount) independent of the amount of initial note voltage. Say you set the initial note range for 5V, and bend for 1V total range in one direction. Pressing the bottom of the ribbon gives you 0V on the mixed output, playing the middle gives you 2.5V, and the top gives you 5V. Now say you press the bottom and slide up to the middle of the ribbon - the voltage is now 0.5V instead of 2.5V, because your initial note value is 0V, and you've bent it 0.5V. Slide to the top and you're at 1V instead of 5V. The initial note value will only change once you've removed pressure and applied it somewhere else. You can see this effect in the "dying whale" portion of the first video I did. With higher amounts of bend, but still considerably lower than initial, it's easier to slide notes, you just have to be aware for greater changes in intervals, you have to release the ribbon and apply pressure to the new note. It, in some instances, makes it easier to control sliding pitches, because it takes more movement to get "off pitch". In this last video, I had bend pretty high - in fact it was pretty close to the initial range - I might as well have used the slide voltage only, but I already had it set up.....
Ah, the cello - IMO, it's the most soulful of the stringed instruments. I never had the opportunity to learn, but always wanted to give it a try. I can appreciate the difficulty of it though, just trying to eke out a decent tone on my niece's violin using a bow (holy cow!).
In our school, we didn't have stringed instruments, so, instead I played the French horn, later moving up to double French horn. Later, of course, I picked up the guitar. It's true about the brain-hand-ear thing (in the case of French Horn, it's brain-eye-tongue-lips-ear-one-hand-in-bell-one-hand-keying-pitch). Regular guitar gives much more tactilie feedback than a fretless instrument (I'm assuming), but, still, it doesn't take long until one can play the thing while rarely glancing at the fretboard. The hand forms the chord formations, and, whether basic or barre chords, they really don't require a lot of looking. The different modal scales kinda worked the same way (at least in my experience). I never got to the point where I could do the more advanced jazz chords without looking, though. The diminished and augmented chords that always seemed to require linguini for fingers....
Quote:
The ability to play "in tune" or not will only make this controller more flexible!
Exactly! Even if one had no desire to play the ribbon as a tuned pitch controller, a ribbon is still very useful for controlling other parameters in a patch. A lot of people play by tweaking knobs and so forth. The ribbon makes a great knob tweaker, because you can do things with it that you can't do turning the knob - you can go from smooth, to stepped, at whatever interval in whatever direction at the drop of a hat. With multiple outputs, you can can control several parameters in concert; it's fun thinking of combinations of voltages controlling which thingies to do what thangies.
That, and you can mount a flame thrower on the end of a ribbon.....
Joined: Aug 16, 2006 Posts: 477 Location: new york city
Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 8:23 am Post subject:
I have purposefully ignored this thread for the most part since derailing the original Stribe thread. Thinking about this too much in advance would drive me up the proverbial wall for sure. Now I have taken in the entire thread, watched the videos, seen the proto board photos, and finally read the incredibly well written document by Scott. WOW.
Almost unimaginable what you have created here, it fufills pretty much everything I could ever dream of in a controller. Equally incredible is THE APPENDAGE EXPOSED, hard to believe you have had time to not only perfect the perfect circuit, but document it in the most easy to read and grok fashion possible.
Any chance that you could leave your job, family and worldy responsibilities behind and write something along the lines of ELECTRONICS FOR SYNTHESIZERS FOR DUMMIES????
I now allow myself to give in to anticipation fever.
Joined: Dec 23, 2005 Posts: 4127 Location: Mount Hope, KS USA
Audio files: 96
Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 11:28 am Post subject:
Well, turns out there'd been a previous Stribe thread that I'd missed, so that one needed diversion.
There is a doc that similar to what you describe in the works, that is being co-authored by me, but supplies far more facts and practical experience by the main author, someone you may be familiar with..... _________________ My Site
Joined: Oct 26, 2006 Posts: 177 Location: Lawrence, Kansas
Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 1:05 pm Post subject:
Scott Stites wrote:
There is a doc that similar to what you describe in the works, that is being co-authored by me, but supplies far more facts and practical experience by the main author, someone you may be familiar with.....
Man, you really are a shameless tease. As if the damned appendage wasn't enough - now this!
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