Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Ginette - DIY instrument based on the ondes Martenot
YouTube Uploaded by pemakini on May 8, 2011
"I designed and built this instrument during 2010-2011. The idea is based on the ondes Martenot that was invented by Maurice Martenot in 1928. My instrument is named 'Ginette' after Ginette Martenot - an ondist and the sister of Maurice Martenot. She played ondes Martenot at the premiere of Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie.
The heart of the instrument is a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) that produces the sound. I found great VCO design from Music From Outer Space -website. The VCO produces four waveforms or timbres - sine, triangle, ramp and square - which can be selected on the panel. The range of the fingerboard is four octaves and on the panel there is an octave selection knob, so the total pitch range is nine octaves. In practice the tracking isn't so accurate in very high and low registers. There are connectors for an external CV and a gate, so the instrument can also be controlled using external device like a keyboard or a sequencer, which both are my future DIY projects. I am going to improve the instrument by adding a voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA). This would fix the problem with the volume control button that leaks some signal when it's supposed to be mute.
The background noise in the video is due to the tube amplifier.
Here's the link to MFOS VCO:
http://www.musicfromouterspace.com/analogsynth/VCO20090724REV0/VCO20090724REV...
Dana Countryman's ondes Martenot controller project inspired me to start my own project. Here's the link:
http://www.danacountryman.com/martenot_project/martenot.html
Thanks to: Ray Wilson and Music From Outer Space, Dana Countryman
Special thanks to: Heta, Mikko, Teemu"
6 comments:
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MATRIXSYNTH - EVERYTHING SYNTH
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great work and excellent performance!
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment, Dan! And lots of thanks to Matrixsynth for sharing my video!
ReplyDeleteHello dear friend,
ReplyDeleteIve been looking all over the internet and I havent found anything about the connections.
Could you help me please doing the connections, I am kind of new on this about the ondes martenot, and I d like to create my own prototype.
The only thing that I know, is that I need A VCO, volumen, the ring and something like a keybord to follow notes.
Please man, could u help me on this?
answer back pls, I will be very appreciated. thank u very much
Nacho
See the comments on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2jxMRvv7m0. You can try asking there.
ReplyDeleteHi, very nice sound coming from that machine! I would like to build the same. Can you tell me which VCO you built because the link to the MFOS site doesn't seem to work. Thanks, DJ
ReplyDeleteOne of the best I've heard! Can you tell me which VCO you built, the link to mfos is not working anymore!? Thanks, DJ
ReplyDelete