[sdiy] Room 211... Envelope Follower or Pitch to Voltage on a chip?

[Cynthia Webster]

Hi All!

I was at this crazy event last night, essentially someone rented out an
entire motel Lock, Stock & all 30 rooms - upstairs and down, in a balconied
courtyard surrounding a swimming pool, and had a different artist performing
their works in each room.  A great Idea actually!

They charged $20 bucks a head for folks to make he rounds and buy drinks and
hot dogs while viewing lots of crazy art projects over a 24-hour period.
Quite a scene, as It was certainly "a Happening" and I was somewhat honored
to help my friend Bob with his feedback piece in room 211...

He had contact mics placed around the room, which fed into his board and
then on to his Macintosh laptop running Super Collider software -  and then
out into the room via amplifiers and speakers.  It was a casual and friendly
clean room that was mostly un-attended.  The message on the door read
basically.  "Hey, do what you want in here, watch tv, play some records,
or even take a shower if you like - just know that your sounds are being fed
into multiple delayed feedback loops and amplified out to the rest of the
world!

I was soldering some last minute connectors for his project, and showing
folks what could be done with Train whistles and rubber mallets on flower
vases filled with contact microphones!  it was interesting to see just
how many people were attracted to a crate full of vinyl records to muse
through and play.  Of course the sound from the TV and the turntable were
seriously altered.  (i.e. Wacked!)  :)

Bob said that he'd like to eliminate the laptop and build a stand alone box
to do this patch that he has been perfecting lately...
 
(*this*  was of course music to my ears!) and I pulled-out out my art tablet
and started to draft out an analog equivolent of what the software was
doing... 

it turned into reams and reams of paper!

What with all of the pre-amps, envelope following, filtering, and granular
synthesis (LFOs controlling VCA & VCFs chopping), I ultimately concluded
that what he really needed was four or six ARP 2600's running side by side
to do the piece! 

This all leads me to ask you fellow friends and Do it Yourselfers -
If anyone makes a combo pre-amp, envelope follower on a Chip kind'a thing?

or I was thinking to use Don Tillman's famous FET preamp

http://www.till.com/articles/GuitarPreamp/index.html

and wonder if there are VCA/Envelope Follower chips, or sub-assemblies
anywhere?  As the needs of this all in one box - Analog for laptop solution
are quite complex!

Aside from CEM Curtis and SSM Chips-  what else is (Currently) out there?

The logical next step would be to seek the ultimate Pitch-to-Voltage circuit
as well.  (I was wondering if anyone has tried using a car tachometer chip
to do pitch to voltage conversion)?

The main idea here is to make many channels of this patch thing for my
friend so he can use many microphones - without a room whole full of
modulars.

Ha!  I feel a bit like like John Henry must've felt against the Iron Horse!

Ideas certainly appreciated by all.

Cynthia