🚀 go-pugleaf

lverwaet@eduserv.rug.ac.be (Laurens Verwaetermeulen) wrote:
>Can anybody tell me how I can fix a MIDI-connection on an analogue 
>SH101 keyboard. It's sort of like a Baby Moog, I guess .
>Thanx in advance,
>Mail me,
>
>lverwaet@rug.ac.be
> 
oh dear....

I guess we were all new to this stuff at some time or another, so
I`ll answer for the benefit of those who don`t know about MIDI and CV.

starting off with what the two terms stand for, we have:

CV              which means Control Voltage
MIDI            which means Musical Instrument Digital Interface

so CV consists of a continuous (i.e. varying between two points) 
voltage level, representing the pitch of the note to be played, and 
another signal, the gate signal which is either high or low and turns
 the volume on or off (no velocity sensitivity here). 

MIDI, on the other hand uses a stream of bytes, to specify pitch
(or note) and velocity(or volume). It`s more complex than this, but 
I`m just giving the general idea.

So what you need to convert a MIDI signal to CV, is a device that can
 recieve serial data at about 33kHz(can`t remember the actual 
frequency off the top of my head) and output two voltage levels, 
It`s kind of hard to make one yourself, even if you do have some 
idea about digital electronics.

Anyway, now for the Good News/Bad news part of the letter.
Good News: you can buy a MIDI CV converter
Bad News: In Australia, at least, MIDI to CV converters cost from 
1 1/2 to 3 times the price of an SH101.

At least the 101 has an on board sequencer.................



						cheers. Julian.