MIDI harmonica

I’ve been thinking about a harmonica-style electronic instrument for a while. This thought grew out of my obsession with foot controllers in the past. I liked the idea of playing bass lines with my feet, which grew to loopers and controlling Ableton, the McMillen SoftStep, Pedal Fighter and other things.

I started thinking about the harmonica idea after learning to play with the hands-free harmonica holder a-la Neil Young. I thought it would be nice to play electronic instruments while strumming the guitar this way.

There have been some commercial products in this space but all I have found are either 80s rarities or very bulky things that don’t really line up with my vision of a simple unobtrusive (as much as the mouth harness can be sitting there in front of your face!) controller.

I’ve been made aware of this product recently https://www.lekholminstruments.com. Still seems too bulky to me. I’m glad to see some recent interest in the space though.

Initially my thoughts revolved around using pressure transducers to read the breath going through. Then I started thinking about using piezo elements. Then electret condenser mics. I’m not sure what the best thing is. I am going to try to make the hardware as simple as possible and then do some DSP on the signals generated to make sense of what is happening with the instrument.

I thought about using wind vanes and little galvanometers also. I’m pretty sure that this is a really finicky and unnecessary way of accomplishing my goal, but it’s worth mentioning here.

More to come maybe.