[sdiy] pitch to voltage

[Toby]

on 11/3/01 10:47 PM,  at nick at dreamtheater.zzn.com wrote:

> I am planning to create a semi-modular synthesizer for use with the electric
> bass guitar.  I know that i will need an envelope follower, preamp, and
> pitch to voltage converter.  I had no problem with the first two modules,
> but the third has me stumped.  Could anyone point me towards some info on
> pitch to voltagge conversion?  I'm looking for schematics and theory.
> 
> Thanks,
> Nick Liebrecht
> 
Nick, you might want to screw the whole pitch-voltage conversion thing, I'm
assuming that you want to take the voltage and use it in a vco(which can be
nice because you can further vary the pitch(modulate it) in funky ways.)
>From everything I've read on the list for the last two years, the
pitch-voltage thing seems very painful to realize in a completely functional
way.  I think it would be much easier just to do waveform conversion on the
bass signal.  You can get a pretty nice square, triangle, sine coming out of
your box, in addition, you can get a sub-octave and if you're crafty enough,
get an octave up.  I actually got a PLL to do an 8x frequency multiplication
then I divided that by nine and got a major second harmony on a square wave
guitar signal.

Anyway, I thought I might warn you, but maybe my warning will encourage you
to find a great new solution to the pitch-voltage thing.  I just love it
when somebody tells me something is difficult to achieve, because the first
thing I want to do is figure out a way to do it.

toby