On Sun, Oct 06, 2013 at 08:59:21PM +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
  On Sun, Oct 06, 2013 at 01:29:23PM -0700, Ken Restivo
wrote:
   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. 
 
 It would have to have sufficient bandwidth and resolution,
 both very high on the original.
 Ciao,
  
I once emulated the frequency modulation with an arduino and a cheap IR sensor.
I don't remember the resolution of the arduino/IR sensor, but I got pretty good
results.
I translated the distance values into frequency values, and I remember I had to
stabelize the input, by taking avarages over the values. If you used two sensors
like this, I think you could make a nice theremin controller...
Greetings,
lieven