[sdiy] Control Interfaces (was Wakeman)

[Rainer Buchty]

> There are no yogi skills required to control more than a few
> parameters while playing an instrument. Look for instance what violin
> or wind instrument players do all the time.

So where exactly do they use their feet? :)

The violin player usually controls two parameters with one hand (pitch and
pitch bend), and another two with the bow (staccato/legato, "expression").

Similarly, the wind instrument player applies the basic note information
with his hands, additional pitch control is provided through the blow
pressure. In addition, "expression" can be added by the way the instrument
is blown (volume, "modulation effects").

> Or consider a vocoder: you can control a whole filter bank with your
> mouth. You cannot control each filter gain individually, but you can
> do a lot more than with two hands and a set of knobs.

Yes, but here again we're at the point of a "correlated controller", just
like the "brightness knob" I mentioned earlier.

Of course you can do complex modulation of a specific kind with such a
(specialized) controller, I never doubted that. However, it will always be
limited to a special task.

> IMHO knobs are indeed the best "programming language" (as someone else
> put it here in this thread) for a synthesizer, but there are better
> options when it actually comes to *play* the instrument. For instance
> you can vary your breath pressure much quicker and more intuitively
> than turning a knob.

Fully agreed. Nobody really wants to tune in the actually played notes
with a knob -- depending on the player's preference he'd more likely want
to go with a keyboard, string or wind controller.

But that only covers the note itself. What about the "expression" control?
String and wind instrument players have the advantage that real-time
modulation is a natural feature of their instruments whereas the piano
player is more or less done with modulation after the key is stroked;
maybe some fiddling with the damper/sustain pedal.

So maybe the overall question is: what would a "keyboard" (for the lack of
any better word...) would look like which allows you playing any kind of
chords (-> polyphonic play) but gives you a similar amount of
expression/modulation controls as e.g. string or wind instruments while
still being playable at similar ease of the piano keyboard?

Rainer