Midi chanter

WannabePiper · Post by **WannabePiper** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 10:52 am

I was actually going to try playing whilst having a blanket draped over my shoulders and covering the "playing area" this weekend. We'll see how it works.

Varghjärta · Post by **Varghjärta** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 10:48 pm

MarcusR wrote: I talked to Anders about developing an uilleann version a few years ago.

I asked him as well about it this year I belive. But he had no plans on making one. I guess he figures the market is a wee too small for it to be worth it.

But I too would like to have one, very much so, which I could use headphones with and play everywhere. On a bus,train or just sitting in a park a sunny day beneath a tree -- in a city enviroment.

Me want.

Eivind · Post by **Eivind** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:28 am

I have been thinking about this, and regarding photodiode;
thought about using photodiodes for all the fingerholes as well - to bend notes

Every hole would use an ADC channel each, and you would need a calibration function for tuning to the ambient playing light..
Also, an ADC for each hole _could_ provide severe penalties for players not properly closing the holes, if the sensors are sensitive enough.

The upper octave could be accomplished by just registering the correct sequence: close all incl. bottom - increase bag (sensor) pressure above some threshold - open relevant fingering

Isn't this so?
Falling back into 1st ocatve simply implies releasing bag pressure below threshold... Perhaps this threshold could be calibratable as well...hummm..

Anyway; this is a system that might feel very awkward to the user, but at least you would get to practice fingering.
Proper use of the bag, getting used to a real reed etc. will take proper practice on a proper chanter (or so I've heard...I would of course not know this since Im a newbie..ehehe

Not using a sensor on the Eb hole It would use 9 ADC channels, or 8 channels if you choose a simple (non-calibratable) on/off-switch for the bag pressure sensor. Could be a fun project.

Any more thoughts?

Brian Lee · Post by **Brian Lee** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:37 am

Why no sensor on the Eb? Isn't that a pretty widely used note in piping for effect etc.? If this could be widely mass produced for a couple hundred bucks, and had some decent tone samples it might be a decent idea to pursue. But the cost still seems to be highly prohibitive. What would it take to get the cost down?

Eivind · Post by **Eivind** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:52 am

Brian Lee wrote:Why no sensor on the Eb?

Just to save an ADC channel... Dont know if it's that widely used? Example?
I am used to the AVR range of microcontrollers; and they have 8channels. But then again; if one would want an analog channel for the bagpressure thingie as well; then you'd need something more anyway.

But then again, I'm just playing around with the thought

brianc · Post by **brianc** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:01 pm

Eivind wrote:Also, an ADC for each hole _could_ provide severe penalties for players not properly closing the holes, if the sensors are sensitive enough.

...........

Electrocution as a way of learning the ACA triplet... who'da thunk it?

You WILL learn to play the UP -- OR ELSE.... BZZZZZZZZZTTT!!

AAuughhauuaughahh!!

Varghjärta · Post by **Varghjärta** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:16 pm

brianc wrote:You WILL learn to play the UP -- OR ELSE.... BZZZZZZZZZTTT!!

lol.. oh man.. the mental picture I got from that..

Shook-therapy throu means of pipes, just what the doctor prescribed.

MarcusR · Post by **MarcusR** » Thu Nov 04, 2004 3:25 am

Eivind wrote:I have been thinking about this, and regarding photodiode; thought about using photodiodes for all the fingerholes as well - to bend notes ... snip... Any more thoughts?

Hi Eivind!
A photodiode for the bottom “D” is a simple solution as no light could be set to “closed” and anything else is “open”. Photodiodes for tone holes could work but I guess it’s a little more tricky as one would have to calibrate the sensor for only being partly covered and then account for effects as position of the light source, shadowing etc. A circular array of small electrical contact around the tone holes might be an easier and more stable solution. Building this thingy with the right sensors, feel and geometry is one thing. My guess is that this is the easy part. Just try not to ad too many functions or you might end up with something looking like this:

The hard part I think would be to get the right sound out of it. For an electronic UP practice chanter I think one should try to keep things simple and end up with something like the technochanter with the addition of sensors for the bottom “D” and octave transitions. Would probably not sound much better than the technochanter but would serve its purpose. If you would like to try to build something more advanced, that sounds like an UP instead of bleep, bleep, you’ll need to venture into the field of physical modeling. Cause, even if you can detect, bending, sliding, taps, cuts, crans and pressure variations what will you do with it? The characteristics of an UP (sound, timbre), transitions of notes, pressure changes and the vast number of variations would make it impossible to base such an instrument on sampled UP sounds.

Here is a link to the basics principles of physical modeling:
PMT - A Light Treatment for Musicians

If you want to get into more details the CCRMA site at Stanford is excellent:
Modeling of musical instruments

I’m not really up to date in this field so I can’t really say what’s going on regarding modeling single and double reed instruments. But I know that Gary Scavone made some work for CCRMA on single reeds (saxophone), conical and cylindrical bores a few years ago. He is now at McGill in Montreal here is his personal website.
http://music.mcgill.ca/~gary

Cormac Cannon is an electrical engineer and a talented piper from Galway. He might even be a board member or at least a friend of someone in here. He made some very interesting work regarding the potential of UP as a controller for computer-based music for MIT, Media Lab Europe in 2002-03. I don’t know what came out of that, but here are two of his papers on the MediaLab site.

EpipE I
EpipE II

If anyone knows Cormac we could ask him to drop by and give us an update. At least I would like to know if it’s worth adding the Epipe on my list to Santa this year

Last, the picture above is from Ian Fritz’s site on Wind-Controlled Music Synthesis
Fritz's electronic music

Cheers to all of you that made it through this rather long post!

/MarcusR

Eivind · Post by **Eivind** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 6:34 am

Hi Marcus,

yes I agree with u to try and keep it simple in the beginning.
But some visionary and wild ideas are always fun to play with

Simple on/off contacts (and no bending etc) for the toneholes should be fine. But LRD's (?) should work fine for that purpose anyway. I think they _can_ take less CPU than using Resistance-Capacitance netoworks and measuring discharge times.. Also, it will be simpler and lend itself tom extensions later on. Plus; you can still calibrate for absolute covering of the hole; whileas for an electrical contact, simply touching it will be enough to trigger the right response. For proper practice, that is not desirable.
I think.
Will have to look at sensitivities and prices for photodiodes first

Re: Sound output; definitely MIDI is the way to go for sound refinement at a later stage. MIDI implementation is not difficult. VM synths are good sh*t, and I should think there a some really good double-reed models out there; if not Uilleann Pipes in specific. Anyway; we're talking about a practice instrument here....

Now; Back to work (with what I do to earn a living; that is...)!

Varghjärta · Post by **Varghjärta** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 8:23 pm

It just so happens that I could _really_ use something like this right about now! From next year on and maybe longer I will be living on a school campus, and eventhough they seem bagpipe friendly I WILL get real self-concient about playing and people hearing the sh*t -- I'm a newbie.

What to do.. what to do

... *sigh*. I have a whistle.. but that's no UP.

Sadness...

Eivind · Post by **Eivind** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:24 am

Well,

I just had to try and make one.
Left alone for one weekend I finally found enough time finished this little hobby project. I have had the concept and the code ready for a long time, it was just a matter of putting the last things together. For that, I needed quite a few hours straight do get in the working mode. It involved a lot of gluing, soldering and wiring.
Well, it's not really completed yet, as I have to build it all into a little box with a battery pack etc. It is a functional prototype, you might say

It is not a musical instrument. But, in lack of a working chanter you can practice fingerings this way. With headphones, even.

Producing a simple suqare wave output, it does absolutely not sound like any UP. Neither does it look like one!
But, it tells you what note you played. There's a matrix of allowed fingering combinations that produce legitimate notes (or silence for all holes closed), and the illegal ones simply squeaks. Thus, it can be used to exercise finger settings really strict, or slightly more relaxed; all depending on how I program it.

It also speaks MIDI, I have it connected to my computer and some synth software

hehe
So I included a cute Yamaha-panflute-synth sample as well, just to torture you guys:
http://www.tomsing.com/sw/memo.wav
http://www.tomsing.com/sw/memo2.wav
http://www.tomsing.com/sw/digitUP.jpg

George Zamphyr must be green with envy...
Sound and pic courtesy of my SonyEricsson cellphone

It of course does 2nd octave also, through a simple sensor attached to my arm that emulates the extra bag pressure. But this was not attached when I did the recording.

So, this was fun! What's next? Making my REAL chanter work?!?
Hmmm....

@ivind

Calum · Post by **Calum** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 1:26 am

http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=18480

Don't think anyone's posted a lionk to this discussion yet...

Cheers,
Calum

PS Speaking from experience with various electronic chanters, I am firmly in favour (from a quality point of view) of optical sensors. Electrical contacts are too dodgy for professional use.

Eivind · Post by **Eivind** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 1:49 am

Well,
none of those match what I made myself since they are mostly models of single-octave pipes: GHB, smallpipes, Gaitas, swedish pipes etc.. Maybe the Hevia one, but that must be the one not commercially available except on special orders?

I made mine for Uilleann practice. 7 finger-sensors + the bottom D sensor on the end of the chanter. I left out the Eb-hole to keep it simple and because of hardware limitations. No semi-rigid bag, just a binary pressure switch.
So you can nothing but emulate pressing the bag harder. At least you get to exercise the cognitive process of actual bag-squeezing

I think it could help doing it the at the right places and with more ease anyway.

It is an IR optical system. I dont think electrical/capacitive contacts are suitable for holes this big.
They would sense you even barely touching the edge of the "hole".

Reepicheep · Post by **Reepicheep** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 5:25 am

I'm surprised that this link hasn't been posted in this thread yet:

www.vpipes.com

(please excuse if this was posted earlier in the thread and I missed it)

Supposed to be available for just under 1000 Euro.

Eivind · Post by **Eivind** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 6:07 am

Wow,
that sounds greeat for an electronic thingie..
I'm a little surprised at this:
• Capacitive sensing technology for the finger holes
- how can you bend notes using this kind of tech?

It's not possible with regular capacitive contacts, I wonder how they utilize that... hmmm. ON the other hand, if they are able to measure with really good resolution, they can tell how far off the pad you are to some extent.
Hmm.