Eigenharp Google+ Community Archive

Dear Eigenharpists, the G+ time is coming to an end. As some of the information here might still turn our useful (and for nostalgic reasons :) ) I have created an archive of this community at Blogger. https://eigenharparchive.blogspot.com/ All postings were imported, a few comments are still missing though. Have used the Google+ Exporter (full version): https://medium.com/google-plus-exporter If somebody wants to give it another try (or have the JSON, Blogger or Wordpress exports) please contact me, I can give you author rights on the blog. The blog is just meant as an archive and thus read only. For Eigenharp related discussions we have of course the official Eigenlabs forum at https://www.eigenlabs.com/ which is the best place to be for any hardware related questions. For more cross instrument discussions we would also be glad to welcome you at https://community.polyexpression.com/ We have a dedicated Eigenharp subsection there, but also vivid exchange with players of other expressiv...

Good news! Next week Voltage Modular 1.1 is going to be released - with support for "poly cables" that essentially combine several mono CV cables in one. So when using compatible poly modules it isn't necessary anymore to model each and every voice individually (with all the sync-fun if something is supposed to be changed later on). The base program is free, modules cost $$$ though... They also plan to provide a free "personal" license for their Designer which allows to write new modules per drag+drop+Java code. Looks promising! Second good news: It looks as if VCV will also get poly-cable support. Yay, good times for "polyphonic virtual modular" ahead! Am particularly looking forward to this because both VM and VCV support audio rate modulation - which should be fast enough to cope with the audio-rate-realm modulation rates of Eigenharps&Co. Some very interesting possibilities ahead... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hcX8cEr8zI

Surge Synth went Open Source. This looks really promising! This synth was developed by one of the Bitwig founders and is available as open source since a few days. https://github.com/kurasu/surge https://www.musicradar.com/reviews/tech/vember-audio-surge-22113 : It even provides MPE support in the latest (unreleased) version! Sounds like a candidate to put into the EigenD resource package, so any layout can just assume it's there? https://www.musicradar.com/reviews/tech/vember-audio-surge-22113

Hi everyone, am currently in a "rediscover the beauty of EigenD phase :) I apparently also rediscover parts of it's complexity ;) Has anyone tried to set up EigenD for a generic MPE MIDI controller? Would like to use this e.g. with a Morph, Linnstrument and Seaboard. These all have in common that they (are configured to) send out note on/off, pitch bend, channel aftertouch and CC 74 via voice per channel (MPE style). Tried to setup something "simple but nice", feeding the output of a "MIDI input" agent into a "MIDI device" agent, sending that to a scaler, through a sawtooth oscillator, a filter, a gain, summer and into an audio device and throwing some rangers into the mix. The idea is to just control volume of the oscillator and filter cutoff with pressure and of course frequency with the frequency coming out of the scaler. Haven't gotten any sound out of this yet. Can the "MIDI device" be used as is? Or is this just meant as a temp...

Stumbled across an interesting video about how risk is taken out of selling the "product music". It is generalizing quite a lot and some points are probably common knowledge, but I think he hits some important points why some pop music sounds so - arbitrary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII

Looks interesting - a ring that measures your hand position and thus adds 3d expression capabilities to any keyboard. (Might also be interesting to experiment with that, an Eigenharp and a violin bow :) ) Has anybody played with this at one of the previous music gear exhibitions? Haven't found a homepage, they run a Kickstarter atm though: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1618180096/neova-a-unique-connected-ring-for-musicians https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1618180096/neova-a-unique-connected-ring-for-musicians?lang=de

Open Source Modular Synthesizer. Four words that sound awesome in the same sentence :) Will have to play around with that... https://vcvrack.com/ https://vcvrack.com/

Polyphonic expression pedaling :) Impressive setup! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zzkalHmY10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zzkalHmY10

Just listened to the demos of a new physical modelling+sample based hybrid approach for violin simulation. Absurdly realistic. Wondering how well this would work with Eigenharp&Co when played in realtime... http://www.samplemodeling.com/en/demos_violin.php http://www.samplemodeling.com/en/demos_violin.php

In the quest to play more with physical models I revived a dinosaur from the past: Tassman 4. It still sounds great and there isn't much else like it out there when it comes to modular synths with focus on physical modelling, even in late 2016 (well, Kaivo and Chromaphone, but these are not fully modular). And I am glad to report that it works in VpC mode with Eigenharp! You can define the midi channel for each (mono) keyboard or modulation source (as well as for midi learning of the knobs that strangely are not available as inputs in the builder view but only can be automated in the context menu of the knobs in the player view). For some reason I don't fully understand yet you then have to set the global MIDI channel to 1 instead of Omni - then VpC works. For Omni all events are copied to all channels (as expected), for 1 strangely all events stay on their channels as they come from EigenD. (Which might be a bug originally, but it's great in this case!) Very positive surpr...

While we are at unusal expressive electronic instruments - the "Chimera" looks also interesting! https://open-music-kontrollers.ch/chimaera/about/ Quite the fans of open source synthesizers occurrently, interesting LV2 plugins they have! This reminds me of the still-unread SuperCollider book on my shelve... Could be really interesting for physical modelling stuff... https://open-music-kontrollers.ch/chimaera/about/

Have been playing around with the SynthMaster 2.8 update which now features MPE support. Also modulation is now possible with drag'n'drop. Particularly the "physical simulations" with comb filters etc. work very well with Eigenharp now. This synth has really gone a long way (and my license from 2010 is still valid for the latest version, which is great!) Here some world instrument presets: https://soundcloud.com/kv331synthmaster/expansion-nori-ubukata-sounds

Sponsoring a nice Windows development machine for Mark Harris. Hi fellow EigenD users. The big majority of the EigenD development and maintenance work has volunarily been done by Mark for more than a year now. Even though he personally is solely using Macs he has also released Windows builds for us PC users by building them in Virtual Machines - which is cumbersome - even more for anything that is related to actually running EigenD, e.g. for driver related stuff. As appreciation for his work on EigenD in general and the completely altruistic support for us Windows users I would propose to sponsor him a Windows machine that is actually fun to work with. What do you guys think? This posting can also act as a barometer to determine how much interest there still is for a Windows version of EigenD. (So if you are interested in a Windows build but do not want to contribute money at this time please also drop a note) Of course this would just be a present from the community to Mark, no obliga...

Interesting interview with Jordan Rudess about MPE instruments in general (and of course Seaboard and Rudess playing and thinking about Seaboards and Rudess iPad apps in particular). Just click on the video. Only the first few sentences are in German, the entire rest of the interview is in English. One thing I wholeheartly agree with - a new instrument does not only require a signature way to play but a signature sound to become "a recognizable thing". That said of course different people can play the same device with completely different sounds. But then they probably kind of play different instruments really that require their own way of playing, thinking, literature etc., making it hard to establish something desirable and possible to learn from/teach as a teacher. http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Interview-Jordan-Rudess-ueber-Knautsch-Keyboards-MPE-und-Musik-Apps-3129553.html http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Interview-Jordan-Rudess-ueber-Knautsch-Keyboards-MPE...

The mighty Urs (from u-he) has started a blog about audio programming: https://urs.silvrback.com/ https://urs.silvrback.com/

The demos of that new viola library sound very promising: http://www.samplemodeling.com/en/demos_viola.php Did anybody take the plunge and try out how the expressive capabilities work together with the Eigenharp? http://www.samplemodeling.com/en/demos_viola.php

Thinking about going "fully mobile" with my Eigenharp Alpha. Sound sources and EigenD could be run on a notebook. But what to do with the Basestation? There is no chance to power that over USB I fear? Have been looking for 230V accus - which are both heavy and expensive. But probably that's the only solution that would work? Or is there another way out? Here one lighter (but quite expensive) mobile accu: http://www.efoy-go.com Has somebody experience with that thing?

Collecting sounds for a Bazille Eigenharp preset library As Mark Harris already wrote in a previous posting: u-he Bazille supports the multi-midi-channel mode since last week and thus elevated itself into the small league of perfect Eigenharp plugins: This allows per key expressions in EigenD, including not only aftertouch and velocity (which is usually possible because keyboards support this) but also poly-pitchbend, poly-modulation, poly-expression etc.! (A download link to a beta version that supports said multi-midi-channel mode can be found here: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=414823 ) Had a look at the presets from the last preset contests. Many nice contributions! For most you feel that they were made from a keyboard perspective though - many mainly velocity controlled short "pluck and release a string" sustain phase sounds. Or "press a key and hear it evolve automatically" things - not so many that allow to shape a note while it soun...

Have been practising some time with the horizontal3n (top to bottom, right to left) layout in the last two weeks. Wrote down some observations in the Eigenlabs forum, copying it here for your convenience (it was an answer to "jaself" (is that you, Jim Self ? :) ) who proposed a left-to-right, top-to-bottom 3xn layout as an alternative - which can of course also make sense, depending on what you want): I wouldn't write off the "right to left, top to bottom" 3xn layout as it is set up by Mark Harris's Creator atm. The difference between left to right and right to left orientation is just what you plan to mainly focus on with which hand: Right to left slightly favors the right hand for scales and the left hand for chord shapes. With left to right it's the opposite way around: Assume the right to left orientation: There you have the nice property of having two whole tone scales going from left to right diagonally downwards - which is nice to play with your r...

Windows binaries for Creator, Scale Illuminator and OSCpad available As it seems most Eigenharp players are Mac-only users. If some (at least additionally) use Windows here and there for EigenD-ing: It's definitely worth to have a look at Mark Harris 's Creator (a modular setup builder that nicely complements Workbench), Scale Illuminator agent (which visualizes the current scale with key leds) and OSCpad agent (which as far as I understood remote controls Ableton Live via EigenD (don't have Live myself to try it out)). For all of these there are now also Windows binaries available (of course Mac is still supported also). (Technically Creator is a Java program and thus didn't need any recompiling, but there is a Windows starter batch script now for your convenience :) ) Get started here: https://github.com/TheTechnobear/Eigenharp/wiki and download the Mac and Win binaries (and sources if you want) from there: https://github.com/TheTechnobear/Eigenharp Thanks again to Ma...