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"