[sdiy] Timbreon and firmware synth

[Cynthia Webster]

on 3/9/05 12:17 AM, Ken Stone at sasami at hotkey.net.au wrote:

> The show was made by "Horizon". It showed around 1979-1980, and I believe
> was British.
> 
> Ken
> 
> 


It sounds as if it was a roll of static protective foam, like the black
conductive foam that chips are stored on, except a large sheet or
more - all rolled up.

Serge in his Hollywood days made a simple foot controller that was merely
a piece of the black foam in a leatherette bag with two wires attached to
different points in the foam.

If you squish or squeeze the foam - the conductivity rises, so I get the
feeling that the Timbertron may have been a few long and thin rolls of the
conductive foam rolled-up and positioned over a linear resistive element.
(perhaps yet another piece of the same foam, but wired differently?)

This would explain the force sensing, and the left to right control of
pitch.  If it was constructed say, of three or more long rolls bound
together, then different rolls could control a filter or even each gate
different waveform outputs creating the timber changes, (the NTO vector
approach).

Perhaps the linear left-to-right conductive element ran concentrically
down the very center, as it would be fairly easy to add some plastic
tubing at the ends which would serve to spring the mechanism outward
again after deformation by a Karate chop, and thus break the connection
between the resistive elements when the whole "loaf" of foam rolls were
at rest?  

(Double this up for duophony, so it would not really
differentiate between ~hands~ per se, but rather "see" the second
contact and treat it as a second firing - only if a first contact was
maintained.  Add comparators for gate signal creation, and
bake for 30 minutes at 100K.

Just a guess!


Cynthia

http://www.cyndustries.com/




 

>> Firstly. A very rare experimental instrument from the early~mid 70s called
>> a Timbreon. At least that's how I think it should be spelt. I have tried
>> other iterations. Should be pronounced "Tamb-er-on" but at the time was
>> pronounced more phonetically as "Timber-on" It appeared in an early 70s
>> documentary called. "The new sound of music" which may or may not have been
>> an Australian produced docco. But has long since vanished along with
>> hundreds of episodes of Dr. Who and almost all trace of the Aunty Jack
>> Show. Erased by the intelligentsia that ruled in despot-like fashion over
>> the ABC here at the time. But back to the instrument.
>> 
>> I don't know what technology was underneath this thing in terms of a
>> controller. It was referred to as an instrument in it's own right at the
>> time but they all said that. It was some kind of analog synth with
>> possibly, one of the coolest alternate controllers. Given that synths were
>> generally monophonic at the time and this was designed for the job.
>> Actually it was, I guess, duo-phonic.
>> 
>> It resembled what I guess you'd describe as a long loaf of bread. About as
>> long as a 76 note keyboard. It's upper surface appeared to be made of some
>> relatively soft or semi-padded material. It probably had some kind of slide
>> ribbon arrangement inside of it but there was more to it than that.
>> 
>> It was played karate-chop style with the sides of the hands. Left to right
>> was pitch as you'd expect. It had a velocity kind of sensing so that the
>> harder you hit it, the louder it was. But depending on where you hit it,
>> front to back, gave you another control element (Probably filter). You
>> could also do things like hit a note and slide in pitch or timbre by
>> repositioning your hand. The demonstrator played it with two hands so some
>> how it must have been able to tell the difference. I have no idea how it
>> could have discerned all that with 1970s analog/slide-ribbon type
>> technology.  For all I know they could have used pneumatic tubes.
>> 
>> As a kid, I vowed to build one of these things and for some reason I
>> remembered how cool it was this morning. I thought someone may have
>> archived some information about it somewhere but it seems not. But maybe
>> I'm just searching for the wrong thing. Maybe everyone's forgotten about
>> the Timbreon and it has been re-invented with some newer technology? I
>> don't know. But if anyone has any thoughts on this I'd be most interested.
>> 
> _______________________________________________________________________
> Ken Stone   sasami at hotkey.net.au or sasami at cgs.synth.net
> Modular Synth PCBs for sale <http://www.blaze.net.au/~sasami/synth/>
> Australian Miniature Horses & Ponies <http://www.blaze.net.au/~sasami/>
>