Mic midi controller...

fra77x · Post by **fra77x** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 8:20 am

A year ago i managed to make a mic midi controller. I took an old (very old) microphone, plug it into my peavy guitar amplifier (12 watt) turned on the distortion and by an accident, when the amplifier eq reached some values i suddenly heard a sine wave in the position of the distorted mic sound. The sine wave changed in pitch and as i saw equally in amplitude by the distance my hand had from the microphone. That happened as i had made a circle with the mic's cable and another cable attached in the second input of my nova. As i understood (i don't have any idea on electric signal or fields) i raised with the amplifier the mic´ s electric field and my body become a ground. The distance from the microphone raised or lower the grounding. As u can imagine i connected the audio output to the modular and i made a audio controller but with analog resolution. I once connected it in such a way that i could change the grounding by how i positioned my foot on the ground. I made a invisible pedal!!!! for my music. From the start i concerned about how i could be dangerous to my health, but before anything serious happened, my first nova (synth) input burned... As you can imagine i haven't tried that since but i really like a controller with such a resolution... any ideas, are welcome cause to say the truth it's a way to react with your instrument in a very physical way....

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 5:10 pm

On 2004-10-27 09:20, fra77x wrote:
...As i understood (i don't have any idea on electric signal or fields) ...

exactly that's the problem

if you would have some idea there would be a ton of simple DIY projects which make use of certain electrical properties of the body to control gear.

The skin has an electrical resistance changing by pressure or even by the degree of exitement

you could detect brainwaves and heartbeat...

check out some books on the subject or some websites. Use batteries at the human frontend

then it's safe.
It's really no big deal to learn some basic facts about electricity, amp and control technology - and it's cheap.

cheers, Tom

fra77x · Post by **fra77x** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 8:32 am

Anyone has any idea how to test my amplified mic and to be certain that i won't brake anything again. Anyone knows why the input burned? what should i do? if i plug the amp to a small pedal can it be safe?