French Connection ring and other questions

ndkent wrote:
"Someone was asking a while back about the key movement. On a real Ondas all the keys move as a unit. Also they keys are not full scale. The keys are pretty light and smaller. The French Connection seems to just use a standard MIDI mechanism with a MIDI converter inside. No one has commercially produced control voltage keys since the early 80s, everyone uses commercial MIDI keys and a MIDI to CV converter inside the housing."

Are you sure about this? I have to open my FC and see.

Before purchase I asked Analogue Systems, if I could have simultaneous CV outs for keyboard and ring. They said this modification would not be possible, for technical reasons. But if there is a MIDI to CV converter inside...

Somehow the keyboard response of FC doesn't feel right to me. I have thought it is mainly due to the low note priority - I am not a slow learner, but high note priority makes more sense IMHO. But there could be anomalies with MIDI implementation too... at least the inevitable 1 ms lag.

Dynamics with the button:
http://www.esnips.com/doc/e6795e0d-52f0-4eff-9ec5-11d1a0c60e16/French_connection_dynamics

I should improve my technique, but fiddling with my new modular system is very counter-productive!

Jari-- a few replies...

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I recently opened up my FC to make some adjustments. It's very interesting inside!

As far as I can see there is only one "technical reason" why they can't make the modification, and it's not a very good one. Basically it's that the circuit board is simply not set up to accommodate simultaneous slider and keyboard CV output. I see two possible things about the setup that are preventing this.

1) Perhaps the circuitry is not set up to supply the power for two simultaneous CV outputs. But if they had engineered it differently this could have been avoided (if it is an issue at all currently).

2) It looks like the main circuit board is simply a modified generic MIDI to CV converter. This board only has one output path for pitch CV, so because we are using it, we are forced to make the selection between the slider and the keyboard control. But they could have easily had two separate circuits for the keyboard and slider pitch CV. Similarly, they could have had separate dedicated sockets for button output and keyboard amplitude output, instead of the "button/keyboard" switch.



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You may have figured this out already, here's the secret. The wire attached to the ring turns a wheel inside the FC. I'm not quite sure how the device works-- at first I thought it was simply a capacitor whose plates are moved closer or farther apart by rotation, but it is more sophisticated than that. When you power it up, it always starts at zero voltage output. Turning it counter-clockwise linearly increases the voltage until about 4 volts. Turning it clockwise from the zero-volt output changes nothing, but as soon as you start turning counter-clockwise, it increases at that linear rate. So basically what you want to do in order to sync the keyboard and slider pitch CV's is to initialize the slider correctly. Power it up, and then move the ring all the way to the left, so that it is centered over the notch for the low C. This will make it that that position outputs zero volts, corresponding to output of the low C key on the keyboard. Since the notches are spaced evenly, this makes every other position in tune with its corresponding key on the keyboard.

Cheers,
Monroe

Correction-- The aforementioned "wheel" that the ring turns is a Hengstler rotary encoder. Hengstler is a German manufacturer of precision industrial equipment. Their encoders are digital, with a high resolution, but still digital. It outputs a digital signal that encodes the amount of counter-clockwise rotation, and this signal is converted to a CV on the midi-CV converter board of the French Connection. This explains why there is this initialization issue-- I couldn't fathom how the output could always start at zero when you power up if the wheel was a purely analog device.

The fact that it is digital is a little disappointing, since it implies that the FC outputs discrete semitones, but admittedly of a high resolution. I previously thought that the slider was completely analog and continuous, making it superior to digital "ribbon controller" that Doepfer makes and that you find on the Persephone instrument by Eowave. But it's on a par. Now there's no way the original Ondes Martenot had these digital components, and I think it probably employed my capacitor idea, where the capacitor plates are moved by rotation caused by the wire. Now I want an original Martenot, to bask in its pure analog glory.

One more correction-- Persephone is made by Monstersynths, and Eowave is a distributor.

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There is a trimpot labeled "CV gain"

I've gotten back to my French Connection. Here is a quick video sample for those who are interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxOonMLySHM

Just diddling a bit.

monroe
Thank you for your input! I can't try anything right now, as I am located away from my French Connection for few weeks. Regarding slider CV drift, I think it occurs no matter how I do the initialization - and it is still present after hours of playing.

sidecars
Nice video. Your hand seems bigger than mine, yet you are squeezing the ring between thumb and index finger. Maybe not optimal in the long run: I wish Analogue Systems had chosen the proper self tightening ring as in the real thing...

I have both French Connection and Persephone. Despite the shortcomings and the fact that I don't feel motivated to practice them seriously, I don't regret purchasing them.

Best regards
Jari Jokinen

thanks really interesting to see all these variations of the Martenot and Termin inventions.
This one seems most to me like a Tannerin played with a ring.
[no offense]
Could you say more about the difference between them and the Martenot connection?
Just curious, these things fascinate me.

The FC seems to be more advanced than the Tannerin. It is a full-fledged modular synth controller, with many sources of control output-- ring, keyboard, pressure-sensitive button, 2-dimensional joystick-- all of which can be patched to control different types of sound modules as you may desire. The Tannerin is more of a one-piece instrument like the Theremin, which creates its own tone and simply outputs an audio signal, with no options for controlling more complicated stuff that analog synth junkies like.

Also the Tannerin made by Tom Polk has less expressive control over volume, since it is controlled by a knob rather than the FC's button. Some Tannerin models have an on-off switch on the slider, but you can't use this like the FC's button for more musically complex dynamics.

Also the FC is very accurate on pitch (at least mine is-- Jari has had some complaints about his in that respect), and I would suspect the Tannerin to be probably less accurate, but I could be wrong.

One final difference, the Tannerin seems to be far less available the the FC. I was first inspired to buy an FC when I saw Radiohead use it on SNL in 2000. Many years later, after college, I saved up the money to get it. But it took me a while to find out exactly what it was they were using, and at first I thought it was a Tannerin. I looked for some way to buy one, but Tom Polk apparently was no longer selling, nor did he ever have any regular production facility; each one was custom made. However, there seems to be a new one-man operation running if anyone is interested:

http://www.therevox.com/

Though the FC is arguably superior to the Tannerin or "electro-theremin" in several ways, the ET's from Therevox are much cheaper than FC's.