• SONAR
  • breath controller (p.2)
2006/05/22 11:38:05
bermuda
ORIGINAL: djoni

hello,

is there any breath controller available that controls SoftSynths?
Some kind of usb breath device?

I am looking for some sort of controller to give me some more expression to my sounds.

By the way, are there any softsynths that support these types of controllers?

kind regards

joni




http://www.alternatemode.com/malletkat_bc.shtml

there is a video to demonstrate it.

I have one still boxed...it's low on priority at moment...I will get around to it eventually though.

It's not USB though !
2006/05/22 14:45:38
bentleyousley
Like you, I was looking for a Midi controller to add more expression to my playing. I thought that the BC-3 might be the ticket but found it a little non-linear in its output. In addition, moving air through the device was more distracting than I had hoped (not to mention dizzying!).

As I was using the device, it occurred to me that if I had a controller that responded to bite pressure, I might have something more usable. Several of the commercial wind controllers offer something to this effect. But I found no commercial devices that offer this type of midi controller individually.

After a little research, I found a company which caters to robot experimenters. They sell force sensing resistors. I fabricated a device that consisted of one of the FSRs hotglued between two small pieces of hard plastic. I use potentiometers to adjust sensitivity and range. It plugs into a Midi Solutions expression box (you can also use a Breath controller box).

This has worked very well for me. After a little tweaking, I’ve been able to achieve very smooth and accurate midi control through the device. When I lightly apply bite pressure, the control change parameter gradually engages and as more pressure is applied moves toward its maximum value. A couple of trim potentiometers can be easily tweaked for best effect.

I still receive some benefit from the Yamaha BC3; I used the boom to mount my bite controller. (One could ,with a little work, mount the bite controller directly on the mouth piece of the BC3. You could then have both breath and bite pressure controlling different CCs)
2006/05/22 15:11:45
Honest_Al
Are you letting us know your age?



...very..very old


bentleyousley - wow..great stuff I also agree about the BC-3 .. i used to have one and the air you had to put through it.. i ended up sealing the hole there (about 90% of it) so i could play/breath again without getting dizzy..
who knows, could be my age ;) YES, fingers.. it was with a DX7 back then at the 80's
2006/05/22 15:26:43
losguy
ORIGINAL: Honest_Al
Otherwise, try the Yamaha BC3

...and add a Yamaha DX7 or any other keyboard or device that has the BC IN and MIDI OUT

Oh yeah! That's why I haven't sold my DX7! (there are other reasons, o/c...)

ORIGINAL: Honest_Al

...very..very old

Got my DX brand new in 1984. How does that rack up?
2006/05/22 15:34:48
losguy
Yeah, what Al said. Interestingly, about 10 years ago I used some FSR's hooked up to a Motorola 68HC11 microcontroller. It was for a different kind of Human Computer Interface, and not for MIDI. (We were doing gesture recognition for a VR application.) Using it for bite is really interesting, and yeah, adding it to a Yamaha BC would be a really cool hack.

BTW, I used an op-amp circuit on each FSR to linearize the response and to drive the 8-channel ADC on the 68HC11 (so we had 8 sensors per box). Man, if you can interface pots, then you could easily set up a two (or more) sensor system with one box. You can get HC11 development kits really cheap. If you can program in assembler, you can make some really cool MIDI gadgets in a snap!
2006/05/22 16:17:44
dantarbill
ORIGINAL: bentleyousley

I thought that the BC-3 might be the ticket but found it a little non-linear in its output. In addition, moving air through the device was more distracting than I had hoped (not to mention dizzying!).



Note that the BC3 is very sensitive to the way it is set up. If you are having apparent linearity problems, you need to set the gain and offset carefully so that your resulting MIDI control numbers fall into a decent range. My suggestion would be to use some sort of MIDI monitoring utility like MIDI-Ox to watch your MIDI data while you adjust the offset and gain controls. You'll find it to be MUCH more useful when properly adjusted.

...and there's a control to let to restrict the amount of air that blows through. Proper setup is the key.
2006/05/22 17:10:27
bentleyousley
Thanks for your suggestions. I’m aware of the adjustments you mentioned and spent quite a bit of time trying to make the BC3 work for me. I’m a natural tweaker, so I tried just about every setting on the BC3 over the course of a couple of weeks before deciding it wasn’t for me. It did work to a certain extent, it just never felt very comfortable or enabled me to express what I wanted more easily (Which is the real reason to have this type of controller).

The BC3 did serve a useful purpose, it made me think more deeply about what I wanted in a controller, and that led me to something that works better for me.

2013/08/13 17:19:08
alan83
djoni
hello,

is there any breath controller available that controls SoftSynths?
Some kind of usb breath device?

I am looking for some sort of controller to give me some more expression to my sounds.

By the way, are there any softsynths that support these types of controllers?

kind regards

joni



While googling I found this old thread. The swedish company TEControl makes a USB breath controller. Can't post link because I am new, but you can easily google it.
 
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