Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: MOTM

I'm getting a lot of questions on how I connected a breath controller and
what modules I used in the patches. So let me explain. Note, the motmbrass
demo sounds lousy through my computer speakers (both sets), it sounds much
better and larger through good headphones.

To use a breath controller I needed to use the only device I have that has a
breath controller input and that's my Yamaha VL-70m. I'm using the Yamaha
BC-3 breath controller btw. If you have something else that has a breath
controller input like the Kurzweil Expressionist or Roland A-90 midi
controller than you could probably use one of those instead. I run the midi
from my keyboard through the VL-70m and then from there into a Kenton midi-cv
box. The VL-70 adds breath control messages to the midi stream. I only need
to use two CV outs on the Kenton, one for pitch played from a keyboard and
one for breath control (aux #1). No gate output is needed. I ran the breath
control cv (aux #1) from the Kenton into an MOTM VCA to control loudness and
also into some filters to control brightness/timbre. On the trumpet patch I
also patched it into the MOTM oscillator CV's so the harder I blow the pitch
increases slighty. Blow too softly and the trumpet sounds out of tune, but
blowing fast and hard gives a more punchy trumpet sound. After I did those
MP3's I also tried patching breath control into PWM to get more timbral
animation and that also works well.

Since the trumpet sample is just the motm-brass patch but scaled back and
modified I'll just explain the brass patch. It uses 4 oscillators tuned
almost to unison (the trumpet only uses 2). 3 are sawtooths and one is pulse
with a slow LFO modulating pulsewidth. 2 oscillators go into one 440 LPF and
2 go into another 440 LPF (they run in parallel). Using two 440's may not be
too important but it allows for more complex breath control of timbre by
allowing different breath control intensity and timbre for different parts of
the sound (you'll note that in the brass MP3 I can go from full mellow
sounding french horn to piercing trumpet just using breath). From there they
go into an MOTM 410 Triple resonance filter. I use that like a fixed filter
bank or parametric EQ to get a more realistic brass sound by tuning the three
filters and using the mix knob to add that to the sound. From there it goes
through a 420 LPF under breath control. This allows final tone shaping and
at times a greather than 24db rolloff because it's in series with the other
filters. Then from there the sound goes through a VCA under breath control
and that's it. I also went through an MXR Stereo Chorus to turn a mono sound
into a stereo one, and then through the crappy reverb built into my Yamaha
mixer.

One thing I also did was run the Kenton breath control cv through an MOTM lag
processor before using it. The reason is that the breath control data is
surprisingly rough especially when blowing into the BC-3 at low levels, and
it was causing strange gurgling sounds some of which are still present in my
MP3's but get kind of covered up by the time the sound is mixed in with other
sounds (strings in my case). The Kenton was set up to use values 0 to +63 so
that's not a lot of resolution.

-Elhardt