Mic'ing the heartbeat of a dancer

[JCC1996]

As far as I can tell it is a little pad which is pressed approximately against the vein on the animal's leg. Although having mentioned it, I do remember that it is muffled if the animal moves so probably wouldn't be ideal for a dancer unless fixed quite tightly.

[dbuckley]

I'd suggest looking at a pulse oximeter

Kit here.

 

And indeed this little kit is perfect, it has a digital pulse output at 5v.

 

What I'd recommend doing is dropping that with a simple resitive divider (1K, 200R) down to about line level, and feeding that into a RedSound box like this which (hopefully!) will convert the cliks to MIDI clocks, and do the flywheeling and syncing etc. Take that MIDI clock out into any MIDI sequencer, and Ableton Live is probably the best answer for this, and you'll have loops and tracks and beats following the dancer's heartrate.

 

Doesn't take a lot of imagination to plug the lights into the sync as well.

[Seano]

It sounds like it might actually be dangerous to do, what with there being a positive feedback loop in there and all.

 

Like this:

"Warning, an out of control feedback loop between creator and creation can result in dangerously fast speeds and certain death."

[djw1981]

However if any detector is near a muscle used in the dance you will et a muscle contraction artifact.

[Andrew Edwards]

What about something like this?

 

Out to a bodypack and could do something clever with a side chain to create a more 'Hollywood' noise.

[matt_beal]

What about something like this?

 

Out to a bodypack and could do something clever with a side chain to create a more 'Hollywood' noise.

 

These work in a very similar way to the Doppler Machine idea that JCC1996 mentioned above.

 

You will probably get a fair bit of movement artefact with those, but might be a good option, if you can manage to strap it to the chest tightly enough. You will also get the sound of the blood flow though, so will get a lot of whooshing and background noise on top of the heart sounds... I suppose arguably this could be artistically acceptable though...

 

This is what a babies heart beat sounds like on one of these.

 

This is what an adult is likely to sound like with a similar handheld doppler device, although with better alignment to the valves you may getter a better sound.

 

There are lots of similar devices if you try googling "Cardiotocography", "CTG", or "hand-held doppler".

 

will give you the best chance of achieving the typical lub-dub that everyone associates with heart sounds...

 

If you have the budget, adapting an electronic stethoscope to output into a beltpack is probably your best bet, they start at about £100.

 

If thinking about micing a normal stethoscope, beware of el cheapo models though... they won't be your friend.