Yeh born in Australia, moved to HK 7 years ago for work,

Andy

Nice to see another Melbournite around these parts   Welcome to P&S!

More on topic... it would be nice if there was info on the net about Ronnie Burkett's controls. I know they're based on the German control, but I believe he's made a lot of modifications over time. I know there's a couple of Youtube videos of him discussing his work, but for the most part if I recall correctly, they've been about performing not building.

What about Luman Coad's book? I've heard it mentioned a couple of times over the years.

Yes another Melbournite. I will probably head home in Jan. Maybe we can meet up. With Lumans book, I would be interested to hear if its better than the Barcelona book or 'The Complete Book of puppet theater'.What are your thoughts Shawn ? Seems you have these.

Andy

Yes another Melbournite. I will probably head home in Jan. Maybe we can meet up.

Andy

Sure! Always love to meet another person involved in puppetry. Especially as I rarely do these days.   PM me, or email, when you're making plans/have arrived.

Sounds good !
One more quick question,
For an off the rack pro controllers from what I have found these are two good companies:
http://www.tonysinnett.co.uk/marionette_puppets/spares_controllers_kits/controller_2.html
http://www.figurama.de/anatomisches%20F%FChrungskreuz.htm

Any others companies you know of?

Thanks,
Andy

Hi,

the first one, see pic, is used by our compagnie.We call it the Czech control.
The German one I made for my witch, she is a head and shoulder marionet. This control is very good for this kind of puppets.



Johan

How's he controlling the music? That's what I'd like to know. It seems he's able to stop it and start it to interact with the audience. And play certain clips when he wants to. That's interesting.

I am not sure I would ever use "off the rack" controllers. I think the build and balance of the control is just as important as the puppet itself. Not every puppets shoulders are going to be the same width and I want my controller to match that width above as just one example.

I think both books are good resources and have different things in them that make them unique and valuable.  Like I said the one I don't actually own and it has been some time since I had a read through it.

DoLores Hadley whom I learned from had a piano player who just had wrist and back of hand strings.  His fingers had small weights in the end and where made out of fabric so that the joints moved. This worked pretty well.

You can get foot pedals for music systems that you can step on to turn your music on and off.  I think maybe they even have them now that you can step on a separate button to advance to the next track is you are using something like an mp3 or cd player. I assume the puppeteer in the one video had something like that.

Great, thanks for your help guys. Another piece of my big puzzle I am trying to put together. I also found this very helpful video of the original act I asked about: , you can clearly see (1.11min) how he uses his funny looking dangling dowels at the front. He needs a lot of movement to operate the toungue and eyes so he put in a few levers at the front. You can also see his music controller attached to the controller in the other hand.

For the music, yeh i love that monkey act. I think he just really knows his music well and has some clever recordings to seem like he is warming up. It is possible for him to hit to notes though using a pre-programmed squence when any key is hit. This is done here: . Most street acts seems to have a footpedal on the ground to control the music.  For a simple remote solution,  check out the Ijet which plugs into an Ipod. I've spent an aweful lot of time with music controllers. There is a cool new product from sparkfun called the MP3 trigger that can really do some interesting stuff for performers.

Thanks again everyone,
Andy

I love the "Bounce Piano"!  That was a hoot!  

I thought it was interesting that in the first piano the puppeteer had the controller for the music in his hand. That is one cool puppet. I can't quite figure out how he did the yes and tongue though.

I havent seen the mechanism for the tongue or eyes but I am 99% of how its done. A tape measure is mounted at 90 degress , pulled out to the required minimum length and then a string and stopper are placed right at that point. The controller then pulls up this string vertically and the tape measure extends up and then feeds out at 90 degrees through the head. Not sure who came up with this idea but its really really nice. You can clearly see its a tape measure from some of his other videos. He's really taken this idea and run with it.

The bounce piano guy vid is very cool. There is quite a bitter back story to this act. This guy invented the act but another guy ripped it off and became more famous for it (). He became quite bitter about it for good reason (didnt help that other guy was a much better juggler)

Andy