[LAU] Theramin oscillator for LADSPA?

[Will Godfrey]

On Sun, 6 Oct 2013 13:29:23 -0700
Ken Restivo <ken at restivo.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 06, 2013 at 10:55:15AM +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> > On Sun, Oct 06, 2013 at 01:59:15AM -0700, Ken Restivo wrote:
> >  
> > > http://www.horst-theremin.com/images/_mid%20600%20Hz.jpg
> > 
> > You don't need to reproduce the waveform, but the spectrum,
> > which is roughly:
> > 
> >  Freq     Amp
> > ---------------
> >   1      1.000
> >   2      0.191
> >   3      0.065
> >   4      0.041
> >   5      0.019
> >   6      0.012
> 
> Cool, thanks.
> 
> How would one do that with LADSPA plugins? 6 sine wave oscillators into a mixer, one for each harmonic?
> 
> I vaguely remember seeing an oscillator (maybe in AMS?) that had mixer settings for various harmonics, but I'm pretty sure it only went up to the first 3.
> 
> Also, were you really able to come up with that harmonic recipe just by looking at that waveform? If so, I find that remarkably impressive.

I had a go at this with AdSynth in yoshimi but the harmonic amplitude only
has 64 steps (which I think are linear). I worked to the nearest approximation,
which left 6th harmonic at zero. It sounds sort-of right but not totally
convincing.

> > 
> > Apart from that the sound will be frequency and amplitude
> > modulated by minute movements of the player's hands.
> > 
> 
> True, that has a lot to do with the sound. I was thinking a ribbon controller or a simple X-Y trackpad (or an OSC thing on an Android tablet) would take care of that.

To get somewhere near this I put a light delayed vibrato on it, enabled
portamento and used the pitch wheel on my keyboard. A touch of reverb and I was
nearly doing the effects of 'The Forbidden Planet' :)

-- 
Will J Godfrey
http://www.musically.me.uk
Say you have a poem and I have a tune.
Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.