We need 1000 signatures to petition Yamaha to bring back into production the Yamaha BC3A Breath Controller.
You need one of these to do any type of work with Brass and Woodwind synths or sample/physical modeling with your keyboard. They also add a lot of expression to your other synths.
Nobody else makes a breath controller. They are hard to find and very rarely come up on craigslist or ebay.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/yamaha-bc3a/

UPDATE

The BC3A is a headset that connects directly to Yamaha DX7 and EX synths. There's a picture and info on the ipetition site. Midi Solutions made an adapter box that would connect it to any synth via midi.

http://www.midisolutions.com/prodbth.htm
Last edited by MadmanST on Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:17 am; edited 5 times in total

I should've googled before expecting others to do so. My bad. I realize now it's a different thing

Breath controllers were small things you could connect to your dx7 and stick in yer mouth to add expression while playing the keyboard.

I was thinking of getting a new electric kazoo and seeing if there was a way to convert that signal into wind controller signal. I imagine it wouldn't be impossible.

Petition Eigenlabs to make a cutdown headset version of their Pico.

Any ideas for a breathcontroller DIY-project?

not to be Debbie Downer or nothin but I don't expect Yahama is going to be impelled by a thousand signatures, a lot of which are probably not going to be people that would in fact buy one.

when I believed I needed a BC I found one immediately. they weren't manufacturing them then. I held onto mine from the DX7 for years, but it doesn't have much use for soft synths. the function of the later ones is pretty limited as well and I guess the market for that is in wind controllers which are more powerful.

I like the idea of making a project to create one.

http://www.thepiz.org/plugins/?p=AudioToCC

This coupled with the right mic setup, or an electric kazoo may work.

You can still get the Akai one it seems

http://www.fairdealmusic.co.uk/akai-ewi-usb-electronic-wind- instrument.html?___store=default
Last edited by aMUSEd on Sun Jun 10, 2012 2:58 pm; edited 1 time in total

That is a full on wind instrument, the idea is just for the old style dx7 mouthpeice to send wind info while you play a keyboard, sort of like having an expression pedal in your mouth

It's more a matter of translating breath air pressure or speed into an electrical current/voltage/resistance which is translated into MIDI CC signals.
The latter part can be done with old Yamaha synths and the like.

Someone should just create a VST that converts dynamic mic audio to a MIDI control.

You blow or hum into a normal mic and simple MIDI CC data is outputted according to the loudness of its input.

Mebbe I should patent that idea. :p

http://www.thepiz.org/plugins/?p=AudioToCC

Anyone used this for this purpose? How's it work out?

(I signed the petition, btw)

I haven't had a chance to try it yet, hoping to real soon. But it seems purpose-made for the task, just you need to select the breath controller as the cc to manipulate.