posted 09 October 2009 02:40            

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6866040.ece

The Eigenharp Alpha will retail for £3,950 and will start shipping in December. A miniature version, the Eigenharp Pico, has only 22 keys and will retail for £349.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/11/video-mysterious-eigenharp-offers-blinkenlight-sitar-looks-chi/

posted 09 October 2009 02:42            

Ouch!

posted 10 October 2009 20:23            

If you look around the site. You'll also see that he is quite supportive of open source.

posted 14 October 2009 04:33            

Certainly a very interesting contemporary digital instrument.
http://eigenlabs.com/roadshow/ has a really punchy and concise demo they recorded at Air studios in London.

posted 14 October 2009 04:52            

seems to be the tendency in other electronic instrument designers at the moment to push away from the notion of the instrument as a controller. I supposed this is inline with conventional synthesiser design - an EMS synthi or Minimoog was not every considered to be a controller for other sounds.

for those of us who think in a recombinant way, we need to have a way of recontextualising everything and all the time, according to an open-ended ideal - does the Eigenharp fit this conceptual framework or not? it's unclear from the site actually...

posted 15 October 2009 00:13            

Take a look at these 2 links.
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2009/10/09/eigenharp-details-midi-high-res-protocol-and-open-source-plans- for-the-space-bassoon/
http://www.sonicstate.com/news/2009/10/09/eigenharp-interview-with-eigenlabs-founder-part-2/

I found them to be the most technically informative, although still thin on details.

I'm cautiously optimistic that this instrument is about more than running EXS samples and Audio Units. If they open source the software and the protocol especially as they claim they will, then it opens the door to reinterpretation into OSC or whatever format is necessary. What is the communication between Continuum and Kyma right now? Is it a native protocol?

posted 15 October 2009 17:54            

here is another demo report

posted 16 October 2009 02:45            

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7365970.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7365178.stm

posted 16 October 2009 15:27            

There is a language called "Belcanto" which you interact with and issue commands by playing keys on the eigenharp almost like a musical phrase.

I hope we can connect this to Kyma not just via OSC eventually but also natively using the "Timbre" addition that the Continuum sends.

Because this is a private forum I'll tell you privately that I have an Alpha on order. Sounds like other Kyma users have ordered Picos at least.

It can't be a bad thing for Kyma or Continuum as well to have more controllers out there with better expression.

posted 16 October 2009 17:38            

The instrument captures X,Y,Z position for up to 40 simultaneous keys polyphonically. The resolution for each button is 2048 (11 bit) distinct values for all key dimensions and 4096 (12 bit) values for the breath controller.

The pitch the keys send can be float values, so it can be programmed to be microtonal or you can program any dimension to affect pitch for tremelo or slide effects.

The sample rate is 2000 times a sec per key and for the breath controller. I think though that this huge volume of data is filtered using some jitter reduction algorithmns at the software.

So in the end the software could send the filtered data as OSC or via a native protocol to Kyma.

I assume that the native events are continuous, but the software layer can translate this to MIDI style events, so an integration could probably choose what to send and how to package it.

The manufacturer claims the software will be open sourced in February and from interviews with the Founder, it would seem that they expect an OSC bridge and other bridges to be developed.

I certainly would be willing to help with an integration as I'm a decent C++ programmer and I know other users are as well. Not sure if your integration code is C or smalltalk. The eigenD software is C++ core and scripted in Python.

[This message has been edited by bar|none (edited 16 October 2009).]

posted 11 November 2009 21:46            

Question:
I am interested in Kyma control, have you any plans for this?

Answer:
Kyma looks very interesting and would make a great native Eigen D instrument, we haven't yet had the opportunity to explore this further however we will be in the near future.

posted 26 November 2009 05:19            

I have a Pico and the whole software seems pretty closed, I have been writing a AU plugin for sending CC and notes to kyma over firewire which I hoped to get running in the Eigen software, I haven't had any luck getting any au plugins to load in the software at all.

I haven't spent much time on it as I have been very busy with work lately, hopefully I can spend some more time on it next week.

I will keep you updated.

posted 16 January 2010 16:44            

How badly to I want to get this hooked into Kyma at high resolution.

Real badly! Somehow we need to make OSC bridge between the two.

posted 17 January 2010 17:42            

quote:

---

Originally posted by SSC:
Does the Alpha send OSC over its ethernet port?

---

Unfortunately no, but based on the architecture of the eigenD service, it seems like it would not be extremely hard. Obviously they have the data at the service running on the machine and it's already had jitter reduction done etc...

I'll start the conversation over in their forum. The fact that SS has experience already in this area with the continuum, I think would help maybe shape the conversation.

Would it be ok to tell John when he has a chance to ping Carla or Kurt?

@SeanFlannery
thx