Moog Etherwave Plus Hooking Up with an Ancient Roland?

Posted: 10/5/2019 11:55:09 PM
LafterTheFact

From: Baltimore, MD

Joined: 10/5/2019

Hello everyone,

Sorry for the weird tabloid-like topic heading.  I've been lurking all things theremin here and there for the past 10 years. After trying one out in a local museum a few weeks ago I decided to bite the bullet and ordered both the Etherwave Plus and the Theremini. So far I'm loving the Etherwave! I found out my father may possibly have a working Roland SH-1000. It only has one VCF port, however. Does that mean I will not be able to connect it to the Etherwave Plus (which seems to have 3 CV ports)? I need to know ASAP because if it won't work my father won't try to bring it to the US from abroad where it's currently located. Thanks for any advice!

-Pinar

Posted: 10/6/2019 6:55:33 PM
DreadVox

From: The East of the Netherlands

Joined: 6/18/2019

It looks like the Roland only has a CV input for the filter, so that could be controlled with the pitch or volume CV out from the Etherwave Plus or the Theremini and you could control the filter by gesture control, but not play the synth by playing the theremin. Roland also used their own implementation of CV which differs from both Moog's and Korg's implementations. The Teremini has settings to change and adjust the CV out values somewhat and choose whether it outputs pitch CV or volume CV. Perhaps the Roland can be modified to accept control voltages elswhere within its circuit, but no idea how easy or hard that is to find out and to implement.

I still have to make something of a voltage divider circuit to match the Etherwave Plus' CVs to the voltages my Korg MS20 needs, and the trigger signal in Moog's implementation is the other way round from Korg, but that can be overcome by either using the external signal input to derive a trigger signal, or patch it to being always on and having the volume CV control the MS20's VCA.

Posted: 10/7/2019 1:21:12 PM
LafterTheFact

From: Baltimore, MD

Joined: 10/5/2019

It looks like the Roland only has a CV input for the filter, so that could be controlled with the pitch or volume CV out from the Etherwave Plus or the Theremini and you could control the filter by gesture control, but not play the synth by playing the theremin. Roland also used their own implementation of CV which differs from both Moog's and Korg's implementations. The Teremini has settings to change and adjust the CV out values somewhat and choose whether it outputs pitch CV or volume CV. Perhaps the Roland can be modified to accept control voltages elswhere within its circuit, but no idea how easy or hard that is to find out and to implement.I still have to make something of a voltage divider circuit to match the Etherwave Plus' CVs to the voltages my Korg MS20 needs, and the trigger signal in Moog's implementation is the other way round from Korg, but that can be overcome by either using the external signal input to derive a trigger signal, or patch it to being always on and having the volume CV control the MS20's VCA.

Thank you for the detailed reply! I hate the thought of having my relative haul the keyboard here from another continent if I cannot get it to work with the Moog theremins. Sounds like the Roland would require extensive electronic modification, which I unfortunately don't have the skill to do. Is there an Idiot's Guide to Electronic Music somewhere to help me begin to understand the fundamentals behind all this? 

Posted: 10/7/2019 1:54:54 PM
DreadVox

From: The East of the Netherlands

Joined: 6/18/2019

This search yields quite a lot of results for pages explaining CV and other synthesizer basics:
Duckduckgo lite search for "CV control voltages synthesizers explained"

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