Having just responded to a post by @Shiro_pb about an Ondes Martenot style touche control, I thought I should perhaps post about my Ondes Framboise project. This is a digital emulation of an Ondes Martenot using Pure Data as the sound generation engine running on a Raspberry Pi 3 with a custom hardware interface. It attempts to provide all the features of a genuine Ondes Martenot. The first prototype has:
- Input by keyboard (including sideways motion for vibrato) or by ribbon, with a total range of 8 octaves (4 octaves keyboard plus shift of ±1 or 2 octaves)
- Volume control by Touche button or foot pedal
- All of the voices (Ondes, Creux, Gambe, Nasillard, Octaviant, petit Gambe & Souffle) + Tutti switch
- Transposition buttons
- Emulation of all four Diffuseurs (Principal, Résonance, Métallique & Palme) in software, each on its own output channel with built-in amplifiers
- Pedal controlled low-pass filter
- Legato / claquement mode
Plus an RGB LED in the touche button to give visual indication of the volume level (useful in claquement mode) and red/green LEDs along the ribbon to indicate the position of the C notes in red, with middle C in green (useful for keeping track of the octave shifts).
Although far from perfect it’s a lot better than not having an Ondes at all! The construction details and 3D-printed components are published on Thingiverse and the code (Pure Data patch and custom server code) are on GitHub.
There are a couple of demos on YouTube - Rachmaninov ‘Vocalise’:
and some genuine Ondes Martenot music, Messaien ‘Feuillets Inédits’:
The first prototype used a 4 octave organ keyboard, but it’s difficult to source such things these days. I’m working on a second prototype using a Korg microKey2-61 MIDI 5-octave small-key keyboard - this works very well. I’ll be publishing the PCB design for this version of the hardware interface board very soon.
Hope this may be of interest to any Ondes Martenot enthusiasts here!