[sdiy] FW: Controller design

[Thomas Burdick]

Oops

From: thomas at burdick.fr
To: rsdio at audiobanshee.com
Subject: RE: [sdiy] Controller design
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2015 11:47:08 +0100




Brian's right about what I'm trying to do here: build a custom synth around the peculiarities of a bellows-and-reed instrument, which should be easy to play and have the flavor of the original. The goal is to have somewhat of the feeling of an electric guitar or piano, compared to an acoustic one. After getting the feel and control right, the things to change would be:
Even more flexibility in the produced soundsMore polyphony and/or more virtual reed banksMIDI i/o
I'll certainly think about how to map the controls to MIDI signals once I'm happy with what I have, but there's enough difference between what I'm building and what most synths expect as input that I'll put off interfacing to the rest of the world until later.
The VCO I've put together has a triangle core, and a pulse derived from it. Changing the pulse width from about 30-90% (or 15-45% run cycle) and changing the mix from about 50/50 triangle/pulse to almost 100% pulse gives a nice range of metal-reed sounds. I'm encouraged by the sounds of what I've breadboarded so far, but I need to get a more sophisticated controller (I currently have 20 switches and a pot) before I can make any more decisions about the synth itself.
-Thomas
> From: rsdio at audiobanshee.com
> Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2015 12:35:33 -0800
> To: igg.debus at t-online.de
> Subject: Re: [sdiy] Controller design
> CC: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> 
> 
> On Dec 30, 2015, at 11:59 AM, Ingo Debus <igg.debus at t-online.de> wrote:
> > Am 30.12.2015 um 11:11 schrieb Thomas Burdick <thomas at burdick.fr>:
> >> Having the processor tune the CVs sounds like a fair amount of programming, considering I have not only the nominal notes, but pitch bend to contend with, but is something to think about
> > 
> > If there’s a processor in there anyway, why not just build an accordion-style MIDI controller? This is much more flexible. You can connect an analog synth, a sample player, or even a physical modeling synth for accordion reeds (does such a thing exist?).
> 
> If would be great if the project were *also* an accordion-style MIDI controller, but I think Thomas has a great idea to custom-design a synth geared towards reed+bellows analogs. He's basically described a single-VCA or dual-VCA design with multiple VCOs and even grouped pitch bend. I don't think you can get the same voice architecture out of any off-the-shelf MIDI sound module. That said, being able to supplement the custom synth sound with other MIDI sounds would be a great option.
> 
> Brian
> 
> p.s. I'm not opposed to the triangle core, but isn't square or pulse a closer approximation of a reed sound?
> 
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