MOTM

(Nah, I'm not in a flame mood today. Too tired <g>. I'm just not feeling
very opinionated today anyway.)


Apparently, Carlos claims to have built her Circon in 1978 for "The
Shining." Her use of the device in "Tales of H&H" is very recent, a year or
two ago I think.

Read more about it (plus photo) on her web site at
http://www.apocalypse.org/~wendy/circon.html 

There's no mention of it being based on Anderton's design, but it's not too
far-fetched to think that they came up with these independantly. It's a kind
of obvious idea, really. All you need to do is stick a 5 VDC voltage into a
pot (100k?) and plug that into the pitch control of your VCO. Then mount the
pot on something (metal, plastic, Masonite(tm), etc.) and draw markings on
the board to calibrate the pot.

Now if you wanted the output to be MIDI, then you've got a HUGE project
ahead of you, much more complicated than encoding a keyboard matrix into
MIDI. MIDI was designed for discreet pitches (with some small variation form
them accounted for) and getting a wide-ranging sweeping controller to map to
that would be a bear. I know some companies are working on Theremin->MIDI
converters and they are as much art as science.

Perhaps the output from such a pot is best mapped to continuous controller
data or something. Still sounds like lots of post-production work in the
sequencer software though.



-----Original Message-----
... I believe it is most likely the unit she used was in fact one
manufactured  by Craig's Royal Union Electronics, as I do rmember he made
them with the big knob marked exactly as described...as per Craig's
legendary designer reputation I strongly suspect these as made by him, were
quality , rugged units and at least a small handfull are sitll in use..they
would be truly a valuable e bay find! I hope anyone following this thread
with a set of electronotes from the earlyest years 72-76 would kinly dig
through them for the details...Anyone know  Craig or have his e mail
address?  Please contact him and inquire. I am sure many motm's would gladly
order schematics from him to build their own.