Fingerboard design / construction ideas

Thanks Rob ;-)

But no - I really dont hear Clara or the Claramin in that - Oh, its lovely - but it aint Clara ! ;-)

It could probably JUST pass as a theremin, but even here im not sure ..

I am being a bit devious perhaps - I am interested in whether there is something about playing a "space field" that gives some subtle charactaristic one cannot get from any other controller - Even something almost undetectable like the weight of the arm and the bodys control mechanism to keep the arm outstretched - is there any subliminal 'modulation' imposed by the bodys feedback mechanism... That sort of thing.

But to test this, one would need a "true" theremin sound source controlled by a ribbon or fingerboard, and be able to produce music which was indestinguishable from that produced by a theremin..

I would be surprised if the Continuum could pull this off - But I hope it can!

Fred.

I'm somewhat interested in perhaps someday building a blend between the Continuum and the Chimaera.  Have a hard 3D surface with slight ruts at the key centers.  Maybe use smoked plexiglas so there is a light show going on underneath with RGB LEDs.  Use one or more piezos to detect tapping/rubbing events and integrate this into the capacitive info.  Playing it could be a tap to start a note, then move the finger(s) around, even in the air, to slide / modulate it.  Maybe use a tactile feedback transducer with feedback to bow it like a violin.  Unlike the Theremin, almost anyone could immediately play something on it.

Fred wrote: ".......the innovator should always be trying for 'better' and listening to those who are critical, and trying to see why they are critical."

I agree Fred, but the problem is that innovators are not always able to hear why others may be critical of their designs and ideas. Either they simply do not have the ears to hear or, as builders rather than players of the instrument, they lack the technical mastery to understand the shortcomings being pointed out by genuine virtuosos. 

Bob Moog, as brilliant as he was, fell into these traps. Some of the flaws of his Etherwave Pro theremin were pointed out repeatedly before the instrument went into manufacture and distribution but warnings went unheeded. Now owners of the instruments are forced to turn to third parties for "fixes" that should never have been necessary in the first place.

OT

"Some of the flaws of his Etherwave Pro theremin were pointed out repeatedly before the instrument went into manufacture and distribution but warnings went unheeded." - Coalport

This sounds like arrogance - But one thing I am sure about having followed Bob all my life, is that Bob didnt have a microgram of arrogance in him!

So I suspect that it wasnt Bob who rushed the E-Pro to production without heeding the advice, but that it was whoever managed the financial side of the business.

I can just see it - "No, we cannot afford to delay production for some irrelevant detail which wont affect sales - youve already spent twice the allocated time on this instrument".

And even if he had wanted to, by that time Bob probably never had the energy for a fight.

(a possible alternative explanation is that some thereminist of high regard liked the E-Pro volume response, and Bob trusted this persons opinion above the opinions of those who saw the response as a flaw.. But the fact that Bob did provide the original diode modification upon which others built more advanced modifications, leads me to think that Bob could easily have fixed the problem, but for some reason chose not to, or was prevented from doing so)

Fred.

OT

"the problem is that innovators are not always able to hear why others may be critical of their designs and ideas. Either they simply do not have the ears to hear or, as builders rather than players of the instrument, they lack the technical mastery to understand the shortcomings being pointed out by genuine virtuosos. " - Coalport

This isnt an excuse with modern electronics IMO -

Even if one cannot hear something, one can see it - using a good spectrum analyser, one can see things you cannot hear, and accept that someone else could hear it.

As for "technical mastery to understand the shortcomings being pointed out by genuine virtuosos.", again - Everything is quantifiable.. For example, the E-Pro volume response.. Take an instrument that has a volume response a virtuoso likes, analyse this, compare it to what your new instrument does.. Its there to see on the 'scope or data logger..

20ms latency on a digital theremin, for example, doesnt bother me at all - I fish about for a note for probably 100ms ;-) So the improvement of 20ms aint going to affect my performance one iota.. But I know from Synth design and playing keyboards that 5ms is about the maximum delay I can tolerate.. 10ms becomes unnaceptable..

This is the sort of thing that can be calculated in design, and tested on prototypes - And even if I dont get bothered by a problem like this, it would be utter folly to produce an instrument which a virtuoso couldnt use because its latency was too long.. Even if this was fine for me (and perhaps 80% of potential customers).

One does get into some dodgy ground here getting the balance right though - I think its ok to produce lower cost instruments for the 80% .. But one needs somehow to declare the limitations of such an instrument in a way which puts off the 20% of "advanced" players, but doesnt put off the 80%.... Not easy! ;-)

Also, having your instrument played by a virtuoso, is the best (only?) way to break into the market - The instrument needs to be good enough for them, even if the majority of those who buy the instrument because of what they hear the virtuoso do with it, could play just as well with an inferior instrument, and will never need the attributes the virtuoso finds essential. 

IMO, its probably more on aesthetic "subjective" matters where its easy for an innovator to go wrong, and for mechanical issues (such as the user interface, playing surface etc) where an electronics engineer who doesnt pay due regard to physiology etc, is likely to mess up big time..

Back to fingerboards - I think this whole area (mechanics / physiology / feel etc) is the greatest potential hazard for me and others developing ribbon or fingerboard controllers.

Fred.

Fred wrote: "....Even if one cannot hear something, one can see it - using a good spectrum analyser, one can see things you cannot hear, and accept that someone else could hear it."

There is a moment in the documentary film, ELECTRONIC ODYSSEY, in which Bob Moog describes the theremins of Lev Termen, and he expresses his surprise that the inventor was able to produce such musical timbres without the use of oscilloscopes or other electronic devices to visually analyze the sound. 

Curiously, none of the theremins manufactured by Moog ever came close to the sound of Lev's original instruments in spite of the fact that Dr. Bob had access to every laboratory apparatus ever invented. 

Thereminist Dennis James who had once studied with Clara Rockmore, having been disappointed by the sound of his SERIES 91 theremin when he bought it in the 1990's, took the instrument to Asheville to have Bob Moog add a "Clara Rockmore" voice to the menu of timbres. I have a SERIES 91 that has that Clara Rockmore modification and it doesn't even come close!

I believe the electronic equipment used to analyze sound waves is actually a distraction because there are subtle elements in the sound that the machines don't detect. You might come up with a sound that looks identical to the sound of Clara Rockmore's theremin on the screen of your oscilloscope, but if you have ears to hear you know instantly it is light years away.

OT

"I believe the electronic equipment used to analyze sound waves is actually a distraction because there are subtle elements in the sound that the machines don't detect. You might come up with a sound that looks identical to the sound of Clara Rockmore's theremin on the screen of your oscilloscope, but if you have ears to hear you know instantly it is light years away." - Coalport

You may be right on this, Peter.. And IMO you are certainly right about ones advantage if you have "ears to hear ".

But I dont believe that someone who does not have "ears to hear " is terminally disadvantaged, and I think there are a load of possible reasons why despite having the required equipment, people still get designs wrong.

It is my opinion (and its only an opinion - one I am inclined to because of my science / physics paradigm) that when designers get it wrong, its because they are failing to notice things the equipment is revealing, or are not using the equipment correctly, or are not (and I personally think this is the major reason) giving what appear to be irrelevant components their true 'weighting'.

And there are practical and financial reasons for this.. The 91 could never emulate the Claramin - Bob will have known this. All that was possible was to modify the analogue synth (inside the 91) to give a waveform slightly more like the Claramin.. But in order to have any chance of capturing the Claramin, an entire redesign would have been needed - The audio resonances from the transformers would need to be replicated, the mixer waveforms would need to be replicated, and thats just the start - The analogue synth in the 91 didnt stand a chance, it could NEVER do the job (IMO, of all the theremins ever designed, the 91 is probably the least likely to manage a Claramin sound - or at least the one requireing the most modification to do so)..

And Bob will have known this, even without doing a side-by-side analysis of the two instruments.. And if the instruments had been compared side-by-side, the test gear would have shown clearly that they would not, and could not EVER sound the same

But I dont think "the electronic equipment used to analyze sound waves is actually a distraction "

I think the "distraction" is time, complexity and cost... And the fact that one realises, the more that one is involved in this business, that there is no return for the effort.. There is much more return from making something and declaring it a "Claramin modification" than from actually engineering a passable "Claramin" mod.

The problem isnt the test gear, its people and time and money.

And this is where someone who has the "ears to hear" has some advantage - because designing to a set of waveforms is enormously time consuming (apart from which, obtaining suitable 'clean' reference waveforms is damn near impossible) - If one can listen to a recording of say the Claramin, and mentally "filter" out the other instrument/s, and create its sound on a simulator and then produce a prototype, you can be going in the right direction quicker than someone without "the ears".

But even after doing the above, to really get it right (and to ensure that you are not deluding yourself) running a comparison between the two instruments using analysers is, IMO, the only way to get close to "certainty".

"Curiously, none of the theremins manufactured by Moog ever came close to the sound of Lev's original instruments in spite of the fact that Dr. Bob had access to every laboratory apparatus ever invented. "

IMO, Bob was more 'into' a different kind of sound and a had an entirely different "mindset" with regard to sound - The whole subtractive synthesis direction is an entirely different paradigm to the kind of thing Lev was "into" - Lev didnt use 'scopes and frequency analysers because (apart from the fact that they werent available) he had no need to - he was not trying to copy anyone elses sound! .. If Lev had been trying to recreate the sound of a Moog VCF, he probably would have needed equipment to analyse it! (Even today, there are challenges in accurately replicating the sound of older synth modules, despite these being transistor based and much simpler in terms of resonances etc than what one gets from the Lev theremins)

Its actually a LOT easier to create a "new" complex sound generator than it is to replicate some complex generator with a different technology - If the parts hadnt become obsolete and technology hadnt moved on, replicating Lev's instruments would be easy.. But replicating Lev's designs using solid state components and not having access to the obsolete transformers etc which gave the tonal charactaristics, well - its a LOT harder!

Fred. 

<this is why Im getting out - When experts declare that a Enkelaar sounds lik an RCA, and others add an "RCA Switch" to a Theremax, and the whole market is cluttered with hype and fallacy, Even if one did make a genuine Claramin clone, only a couple of people would come close to noticing - because only a couple of people could play it well enough to notice! .. Better to make something new and less difficult, where there might be some return.>

OT: RE the Claramin.

I strongly suspect that the best way to get closer to the sound from Lev's theremins could be by modifying the audio waveforms with external processing - Large audio transformers / resonators which modify the frequency response in "dirty" ways and emphasise formants as the frequency changes - that kind of thing.

I suspect that with careful analysis it would be possible to design a DSP and simply tack this to the output of any theremin, much like DSP is used to emulate speakers / amplifiers .. Just take the aufio output from the theremin, derive frequency and amplitude data from this, and re-construct the output audio to match the theremin of your choice..

Even better, if one got inside the theremin and multiplied the oscillators before heterodyning them (so you get a higher audio frequency out) and fed this to a DSP, you could overcome any latency caused by the DSP...

(The above wouldnt work with the 91 though, it would only work with heterodyning instruments ;-)

The above could probably only be done by using modern test equipment - One would need to sweep the frequencies and amplitudes for any theremin one wished to replicate, feed this data into a PC (to derive the waveform charactaristics on a frequency / amplitude matrix) then analyse (probably automated) the required processing.. Then program the DSP using this data.

A team of three good engineers (two DSP programmers / specialists, one general hardware / software), with access to the theremins, a couple of years, required equipment, and one could (perhaps) be there - a little box one plugs into your theremins audio output and selects whatever theremin you want to play (or at least its sound - doesnt do anything for the ease of playing)

Fred.

"The problem isnt the test gear, its people and time and money."

"Even if one did make a genuine Claramin clone, only a couple of people would come close to noticing - because only a couple of people could play it well enough to notice!"  - FredM

This reminds me of DSP based guitar effects pedals trying to do "tube amp" distortion.  The earlier ones were too simplistic, with guitarists complaining the sound would probably fool most in the audience, but not them.  Guitarists bought them anyway for the convenience and durability.  DSPs got more powerful, the algorithms got better, and there seems to be somewhat less grousing now.  Judging this type of effect strongly depends on past experience and the type of guitar plugged into it, so it is even more ephemeral than the "Clara tone".

Products for which development relies heavily on two or three fields to intersect that don't normally intersect - electronic musical instruments being a classic example IMO with the simultaneous requirements of musicianship, ergonomics, EE hardware, software, DSP, etc. - are rife with difficulty.  It's easy for anyone to take pot shots at the result, as there will almost certainly be glaring deficiencies unless executed nearly perfectly in all realms.  That goes double when the product is trying to replicate a real, existing, physical instrument.

One place where I feel most electronic instruments fall down is in how they are addressed by the player.  I think being able to hold it next to your body is a really good thing, and the shape should allow for some kind of natural resting / clamping during play.  The Chapman Touchstick fails in the second category.

"One place where I feel most electronic instruments fall down is in how they are addressed by the player.  I think being able to hold it next to your body is a really good thing, and the shape should allow for some kind of natural resting / clamping during play. " - Dewster

I agree completely with the above..

I think (in the context of ribbon / fingsrboard controllers) there are probably two entirely different approaches - One group being self-supporting "keyboard" style, the other being hand held "next to your body " type instruments like the lovely wooden Chimaera shown in the video a few pages back (or it was - seems to have been moved or removed).

I think there is a place for both - A "next to your body " instrument is unsuitable for use on a keyboard rack, and probably harder for keyboard players to master .. but great in many other ways.

I am inclined to thinking that 'flat' fingerboards or ribbon controllers are uncomfortable and physiologically inefficient when laid out as a self supporting "keyboard" type setup - but are much better suited to "close-to-body" playing ehere the hands can contact the sensors from both sides of the ribbon / fingerboard..

I am not a skilled keyboard player - I dont know how one is "supposed" to play the keyboard - but I have my hand almost horizontal woth the keys and my fingers move from this axis to play them most of the time - this works for me because the keys move! The idea of having to come down onto a pad from the vertical axis in order to strike the right position on both X and Y axis bothers me a bit.. I know its probably completely wrong the way I play, but I often rest my wrist on the front section of the keyboard when playing - even adapted a keyboard to have a teflon 'shelf' extending this area... This was with a keyboard having light "synth" touch I used for mono leads.

For "keyboard" type layout, I am looking at an angled surface the fingers curve over - but this may only be suitable for mono instruments or poly instruments where hands dont cross over (say duophonic where bass is confined to a section of the ribbon).