Breath Control to Velocity

Clint

I need to (don’t laugh) play percussion on my Sylphyo (you’re laughing … I can hear you). Starting with a simple “four on the floor”, but it might get more complex.

I always configure my Sylphyo for a fixed Velocity (usually 1) to avoid the latency caused by [Dynamic]. This works because Velocity is ignored by all the wind-synth aware HW and SW I have.

Since I can't reconfigure the Sylphyo on the fly, I'm looking for some plugin that might perform the conversion (with an appropriate delay) and produce a MIDI Note On with velocity based on the CC #2 that it sees in a short interval after the note.

Anyone have any ideas in this area?? Any thoughts appreciated ...

Paul Flute

@Clint You may be able to do this in Logic, or similar. If you haven't used this program, a learning curve,, Tho it is geared more towards studio work, you can set it up in live mode....look in the environment section or even write a script. Lots on youtube...

edwardkort

If you’re up to a little C++ programming and the JUCE framework, it looks to be maybe 20 lines of code to make the plugin.

Peter Ostry

@Clint
I guess the drum software will insist on note velocity and won't be happy with CC7 or aftertouch. That would be easier, because you could send it along with the breath data from the Sylphyo.

Converting velocity from breath data is not really trivial, you need a certain number of CC2s to calculate the "probably best value" from the surroundings of a recognised note. In Max this can be programmed for tolerable latency and made into a standalone application. I don't offer this because I only work on Mac and have no idea of the conditions under which Max software runs on another computer than mine.

MIDI is not a dense, stable data stream, the calculation is uncertain and takes time, so audio-to-MIDI comes to mind. What if you play a clean synth in parallel with the Sylphyo and use its sound to feed audio-to-MIDI software or hardware? MIDI guitars for example can play drums pretty well and the convertion unit (software or hardware) hears only Audio.

I don't know about Windows software. For hardware, a Sonuus G2M converter may be worth a try. These boxes are made for guitar but take also other sounds. In the video on the linked page, the man tries Theremin and voice (starting around minute 4:00).

Paul Flute

@Peter-Ostry I use the Sonuus i2M which works well for flute and triggering midi from a host of different applications...

Clint

Done and dusted!

Tobi from Ableton Drummer (https://abletondrummer.com/) whipped up a Max4Live device that does the job precisely. It has a configurable delay window, which I set to around 12 msec. This gives me good results with the Sylphyo Breath Rate configuration set at Low (125 Hz).

The device is not public yet, but if you contact Tobi, he will probably start offering it for sale shortly ...

Peter Ostry

Ah, Max4Live, the ugly little brother of Max :-)
So you got a quick solution, very good!