My Mind-Controlled Analog Synth is Operational, by Robert S.

[marbles]

My friends-- It was awesome seeing many of you and your bands at the Athens Pop Fest last week. What a great week!

As some of you may know, I was working on putting together a mind-controlled Moog synthesizer, allowing you to play the synth with your thoughts, but was having trouble perfecting it. It turns out my Moog MG-1 synth (the first instrument I ever owned, incidentally) has a slider that shorts out, and that was causing me mysterious problems. Anyway, I got the thing working yesterday and have been playing around with it a little:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9-ig2H8WMM

It is an easy modification to make, to the Mattel Mind Flex game, to connect it to the control voltage (CV) input on an analog synthesizer (the CV is labelled "pitch" on my MG-1). I will post instructions soon, so that others can play their analog synths with their thoughts as well-- an interesting and satisfying feeling, even though it is challenging to control.

I see the thread of questions I intend to answer has blown up lately-- I will get in there this next week, I swear, and be a good correspondent and Townhall member.

Good thought vibrations,
Robert Schneider

[one-headedboy]

Robert you are a robot from the future aren't you?

[Nico]

This is so cool. Robert, you're my hero.

[Bananas]

I am wearing my tin foil hat around you Robert...

[Akryllic Love]

This is really awesome.

[crappybassist96]

I want to share this with everyone I've ever met.

[tsuxiit]

This is badass. It's like a brain theremin.

You should program it so as the pitch corresponding to your brain wave intensity "rounds" up or down to the nearest pitch in a scale you would program in (if not chromatic then just like a major scale). Then you could actually play some synth lines with your brain! Maybe.

[Abel]

You should program it so as the pitch corresponding to your brain wave intensity "rounds" up or down to the nearest pitch in a scale you would program in (if not chromatic then just like a major scale). Then you could actually play some synth lines with your brain! Maybe.

Real mind-controlled keyboardists don't use auto-tune.

[spiffy_kimbean]

[marbles]

Thank you guys for your nice comments : ) <== really smiling big

Tsuxiit, that is a great idea, I really want to be able to do that. I think Autotune is practically custom made for such a purpose, despite the awful sounding vocals of current Top 40 music. If anyone can help me figure out a way to force a continuously changing pitch similar to a Theremin into the structure of more rigid intervals like a keyboard, or even a particular scale (major, minor, or Non-Pythagorean for instance), please let me know.

I actually have modified the unit more extensively, and plan to post instructions and photos on how to do it yourself, this week. Does anyone know, in just a few words, how to upload photos to this thread?

Love,
Robert