My Theremin "Guitar" Project

well hey thanks for your input guys. I do believe the theremin 'tar idea is now being scrapped. was just a crazy concept that i thought could work but if not, hey ill stil be able to build myself an alright midi keytar.

Skipmonkey,
I think you are probably wise to abandon (or postpone) attempts to include a Theremin in your 'tar..

but you could really be missing out if you abandon the Theremin as a result of this.. The Theremin is a wonderful instrument - unlike anything else.. And in making one you would gain a huge amount of understanding not only of electronics, but also of principles extremely useful in electronic music.

I believed you would be better placed if you first built a stand-alone Theremin before you thought about putting it in a 'tar.

I am sorry if I discouraged you - I was a bit harsh! .. I do think your project was hugely ambitious, and that you were walking into a mine-field without adequate understanding.. But, having said that, even if you had "wasted" your time, you would have learned from the process - I now regret the "good" advice I gave...

[i]"the ring-mod being fed the dry theremin signal and the same signal pitch-shifted by 25 cents, to produce pitch-related beats in the sound" - Gordon C [/i]

Gordon, I would love to know how you pitch-shifted your Theremin sound by 25 cents, so that you had the original and the shifted signals to feed into the ring modulator! .. Was this some DSP unit you were using?

I used a Boss PS5 SUPER Shifter (http://www.bosscorp.co.jp/products/en/PS-5/index.html) guitar pedal.

I'm not sure why they call it SUPER (in capitals, no less) - to my ear the shifted tone has none of the richness of the sound from the etherwave - you can hear this on [i]Butterflies of Vertigo[/i] - and this needs to be taken into consideration when using it. Nonetheless it has its uses. I do not know how it compares to other pitch shifting pedals.

(Although is, not surprisingly, a lot less lo-fi than my Boss PS2 which predates it. The PS2 does rather more damage to the tone but uniquely has a feedback loop, allowing you to add multiple harmonics or subharmonics to a tone, and enharmonic subharmonics at that! If you can imagine a stomach churning deep sea bass line, played on a gothic church organ with almost bell like qualities...)

At the moment I'm experimenting with plugging my iPod Touch into one side of the ring-mod. I found a couple of very nice drone synthesizers (both by the same programmer, so with a lot of similarities to each other) - SrutiBox and Droneo (link (http://jhhl.net/iPhone/)). Early results are promising.

(I should mention that one thing SrutiBox does not do very well is emulate an acoustic sruti box. It is, however, far more flexible than an electronic sruti box.)

ha thanks fred! no worries about being harsh i would have wasted my time.

i still think the idea would be neat, possibly optical theremins? or even using the "Drawdio" concept using just a wire running up the neck, could allow for more controll i believe, just would like a way to make it sound better.

also even more off topic, anyone know of any Joystick Midi controllers i can use as pitch bend/modulation wheel? preferable something USB based. i cant find anything like that that's small enough the fit on the neck that doesnt have either a keyboard with it or 30 other knobs and whatever. just like 1 simple video game style joystick that would controll X and Y signals.

[i]"possibly optical theremins?"[/i]
- Much easier to implement in an application such as a 'tar.. much better otion.

[i]"also even more off topic, anyone know of any Joystick Midi controllers i can use as pitch bend/modulation wheel?"[/i]

It is a real easy thing to make.. there are loads of PIC circuits / software for MIDI, which could easily be adapted to do wat you want.. all you need is the MIDI routine and an ADC routine.. Both of these are readily available on-line, as is simple hardware interface to the PIC (opto-isolator, transistor, and a few resistors)

I cannot find it right now - but I have seen a kit based on a PIC, designed to take a couple of potentiometers and assign these to MIDI messages - google for relevant words such as PIC, MIDI, controller, kit, ADC etc.. You may find it - Also, you could email your address to me - I have a link (perhaps even a .pdf) stored somewhere, and if I find it i could let you know.

Kenton (U.K. based) may do something suitable - they are a small friendly company who are often willing to do specials, or take a good idea and put it into production, with a freebie for the person who thought of it!

<--- my email is in my picture

Skipmonkey,

Here (http://www.geocities.com/tpe123/folkurban/synthstick/synthstick.html) is another option to consider.