is this guy nuts? is this possible?

[tomvelsor]

okay so, i was at work today, comming back from my break, and a customer overheard me talking to a guitarist friend on the phone about certain distortion stompboxes. the customer asked if i was a guitarist, i said i was a bass player, blah blah blah, we started talking about stompboxes. he claims to build his own noisemakers, and he was describing his latest invention to me. he said it works like an envelope filter, based on your playing dynamics, but it does not control a wah, it controls oscillations. the harder you play, the higher the pitch goes, softer=lower, ext ext. is it just me or does this just not sound realistic? i took down his phone number and told him id be interested in trying his stuff, but i ended up loosing the number

well, has anyone heard of anything like this? thoughts?

[dcr]

Sounds kinda like some sort of a VCO (Voltage-Controlled Oscillator) to me.

Certainly not uncommon, but used more in the synth world.




dcr

[Chronicle]

Sounds possible.

[beggar98]

Theoretically you could have playing dynamics control any parameter.

[wdinc01]

Yeah that sounds pretty plausible. I'd like to see it though.

[bongomania]

Easy! If you have an envelope-following circuit, it controls a variable voltage or a variable resistance. That voltage or resistance can be applied to almost any parameter imaginable, if you know what part of your circuit impacts the desired function.

[TaySte_2000]

ME CAN HAZ??????

[Ely]

The Moog FreqBox is a voltage controlled oscillator with an envelope follower that controls the frequency, going higher in pitch the harder you attack. So yes, it is very possible.

[dannybuoy]

There's a preset in Guitar Rig that does exactly this, it links the amplitude of your signal to a replica of a Digitech Whammy pedal. But you can link it to any knob on any amp/pedal you can think of. You can haz, if you haz laptop.

[speak_onion]

Freqbox (as already mentioned), 4ms Atoner, and I believe the forthcoming Pigtronix Mothership are capable of at least similar phenomena.

A brute force way to do this that I can think of (which is different from what the above devices do), is to set your envelope follower to control delay time on an all wet delay signal. Well, that would cause the pitch to go down. I guess you'd have to invert the control signal. That might not work as well. But it's in the ballpark.

[El-Bob]

Originally Posted by TaySte_2000

ME CAN HAZ??????

+1

[tomvelsor]

im not suprised a moogerfooger can already do this..sounds like a very moog-ish thing.

damn you bob moog, always one step ahead of the rest of us.

[MisterV619]

Originally Posted by tomvelsor

im not suprised a moogerfooger can already do this..sounds like a very moog-ish thing.

damn you bob moog, always one step ahead of the rest of us.

God bless you Bob Moog, always one step ahead of the rest of us.

Fixed that for you.

[bassbmx]

A voltage controlled trem could be really cool. So it could go from fast to slow or slow to fast. Envelope filters obviously work on the same principle and fuzz/dist/overdrive wouldn't really benefit from this sort of idea.

Voltage controlled octave could be great too. It could sweep from high to low or vice-versa. Toad works make (or plan to make) a voltage controlled blender that I imagine could be used to do the octave idea.

The trem one would take a little more work, I imagine.

This has me thinking now though!

[bongomania]

The Toadworks Enveloope has been available for a couple of years now IIRC.

[edwinhurwitz]

I experimented with this kind of stuff in the early 90s. I was working with Lexicon gear, an LXP 1 and 5 controlled by an MRC. I started making MIDI feedback loops in the MRC with LFOs controlling other parameters that would control the LFOs that would control delay times that were fed back so much that they created notes of their own. I wanted to control pitch shift with my envelope, so I found an envelope filter kit (PAIA maybe?) and built it and interfaced it with the external inputs on the MRC that were designed for footpedals. It took some tweaking but it ended up working pretty well. The sound it created was a little odd and unpredictable, though. Then, the LXP-15 came out and it had envelope available as a control parameter. I really liked the idea, but couldn't afford an LXP 15. I had a friend who had one, so I programmed a patch on it that mapped the envelope to the pitch and couple other things. It sounded much better than my homemade contraption and he ended up using on an album, which was pretty cool.

Since then I haven't experimented with this too much, but with most modern effects devices it's pretty easy to do. It's worth experimenting with and don't forget to try negative values as well as positive values (ie. map envelope to delay time with higher envelopes corresponding to shorter delay times).

Edwin

[bassbmx]

Yeah, I checked it out after I posted and saw that it's available. I just don't remember anyone on here having it.