Kelly Llorenna has adopted the Eigenharp Alpha for Freak Asylum‘s new single ‘You Better Leave’. You can see it for a short while in the song’s music video.
Posted in Controllers, Song.
Tagged with Eigenharp, Music video, Original.
By Geert Bevin
– January 31, 2012
Recording of the weekly Eigenharp Clubhouse on Google+ Hangouts, January 30, 2012:
http://talkgadget.google.com/hangouts/extras/talk.google.com/eigenharpclubhouse
We’ve talked about:
- Playing the Alpha with a headset, great quality of the headphone amp
- PianoTeq binaural setting, whurly, polyphonic mode, per-note aftertouch
- More than a thousand Eigenharps out there, benchmark passed beginning 2011
- Discussion about the pain of tuning a real Whurlitzer
- Talk about John Nolan’s voice recognition Belcanto agent prototype
- Goes back to the original vision of being able to talk to your instrument
- Prediction of people starting to talk to computers as a general thing (return of the commandline)
- Memory from DevCon, little prank on Duncan using Stage to change his setup while playing
- General talk about the outcome of the first Eigenharp DevCon
- Idea about organizing a player get together (concert/show/festival)
- Eigenharp players are pretty much scattered around the planet
- Not easy to take the step from playing the Eigenharp alone to playing with other people, have to develop new instincts
- Tutorial videos are missing that show people how to play songs, would be a great community contribution
- How to get started with playing actual music pieces on the Eigenharp, huge initial gap to overcome
- Idea of using existing MIDI files to use light on Eigenharp to show which key to press
- Ferdinand’s MIDI Illuminator
- Idea of waiting having the MIDI file wait for the note to be played
- Discussion of the SonicCouture hang drum usage (chromatic)
- Problems of logging onto G+ Hangout
- Mike talking about the Moog Lapsteel
- Geert trying to replace Moog SlimPhatty sound with a plugin, and failed
- Startup time and prepare up front, startup time is really an issue if you don’t plan
- Create a checklist for what to do when you gig
- Back to Eigenharp novelties
- Belcanto and Workbench providing the visibility
- Talk to your Eigenharp during a live performance
- Pitch detection agent and CV calibration only necessary for pitch
- Latency of playing together over the internet (latency problem)
- Real-life latency, sound traveling through the air
- Expert Sleepers ES-3 module rant and DC coupled audio interfaces
- Demo of connecting Eigenharp parameters directly to audio outputs, turning it into CV on
DC coupled interfaces
- Explicit polyphony management for limited resources, needs new agent
Posted in Tip.
Tagged with Clubhouse, Tip.
By Geert Bevin
– January 30, 2012
John Nolan has been on a roll since the Eigenharp Developer Conference, first creating a VU meter agent and now demonstrating Voice Control for Belcanto.
Instead of typing in Belcanto phrases, you can use this agent to simply speak to your computer or the Eigenharp Alpha microphone and get EigenD to execute the Belcanto phrases.
This is still a proof of concept, using a proprietary library, but the next step is replacing the voice recognition with an open source implementation. John doesn’t think this will be a lot of work so we’ll soon be able to try out this agent ourselves. In the meantime, here’s a short demo of its capabilities!
Posted in Configuration, Software.
Tagged with Agent, Configuration, EigenD, Voice control.
By Geert Bevin
– January 29, 2012
One of the highlights of the Eigenharp Developers Conference was the creation of the first Eigenharp Tau Whisky Dispenser Prototype.
John Nolan remember is was discussed on the forums and with the help of John Lambert and some tidbits from the Eigenlabs factory, they were able to create the first working prototype.
All details can be found on John Nolan’s blog.
Posted in Controllers.
Tagged with Accessory, Tau, Whisky.
By Geert Bevin
– January 27, 2012
Last weekend the first Eigenharp Developers Conference took place in Dartmoor, UK.
It was wonderful to meet up with all the users and to play music together after the sessions and the pair programming. In a matter of hours new working agents were already up and running, this promises great things for the future. We’ve started on overview of the agents that are currently being worked on, it’s quite an interesting list.
One very interesting announcement from the conference is that agents can now be built by using the binary installation of EigenD, which includes an SDK as of version 2.0.35-experimental. Additionally, these agents can now directly be built into a binary package that can easily be distributed or even sold. Given enough interest, this could even be done straight from the Eigenlabs website.
The developers that participated in the conference have continued the drive and contributed back the agents they developed into the contrib repository on GitHub. The developers section on the forums is also buzzing with enthusiasm.
Here are some pictures and a video from the event, technical session videos and documents will be posted soon. Some of the presentation slides are already available as PDF downloads.
Fun bonus, check out the Eigenharp Tau Whisky dispenser
Other bonus, only just one week later John Nolan created a prototype Voice Control agent for the Eigenharp, talk to it and EigenD performs the changes.
Posted in Controllers, Software.
Tagged with Conference, Developers, EigenD.
By Geert Bevin
– January 27, 2012
Spyzer is a Brazilian group considered by the critics, one of the best electronic live shows of the world.
With nearly 350 shows between the years 2009 and 2012, Andy (vocals an synthesizer), Jay (percussion, drums and vocals), Lhux (guitar and live visual production) and Rick (sax, eigenharp, didgeridoo and others) mix traditional instruments with others innovators.
Here’s a video they made about their usage of the Eigenharp Pico:
More information about Spyzer:
http://www.spyzer.com
//www.youtube.com/spyzerlive
http://www.facebook.com/spyzerprofile
Posted in Controllers, Live.
Tagged with Band, Instrument, Musician, Pico.
By Geert Bevin
– January 27, 2012
Recording of the weekly Eigenharp Clubhouse on Google+ Hangouts, January 16, 2012:
http://talkgadget.google.com/hangouts/extras/talk.google.com/eigenharpclubhouse
We’ve talked about:
- new Pico experiences / observations
- Developer Conference / switching to laptop / licences / outline
- Adapting AUs for the Eigenharp, Geert demos this on Hang Drum
- MIDI from scratch example for Pico – syntax, conversations, talkers
- Belcanto for V2.0 enhancements
- changes to key mapping
- Community contribution site(s) & the challenge of contributing
- Workbench will hopefully make contributing easier (rigs)
- some AUs only work at native sound rates (an AU limitation) – hires (96k+) audio sidetrack discussion
- laptop capability for models – improving, distributed synthesis
- contemplating distributing EigenD, just brainstorming
- challenges in distributed *real time* work (vs non-real time)
- what is thunderbolt ‘we are far away from music / sadly, we aren’t / signoff’
Posted in Tip.
Tagged with Clubhouse, Tip.
By Geert Bevin
– January 16, 2012
Recording of the weekly Eigenharp Clubhouse on Google+ Hangouts, January 9, 2012:
http://talkgadget.google.com/hangouts/extras/talk.google.com/eigenharpclubhouse
We’ve talked about:
- Breath Pipe – what it does it do, how to use it in the routing matrix
- Changing settings while playing (either talkers / Belcanto / Stage)
- Workbench introduction / walkthrough
- Selecting keys for a Keygroup
- interacting with LEDs
- Key design goal is the ability to ‘break’ the system, meaning any potential configuration
- Flute / selecting and adapting plugins to Eigenharp direct control
- Built-in clarinet
- Strummer
- Link to: http://www.kirkhunterstudios.com/
- PianoTeq Rhodes etc as examples of modelling. Using it on multiple channels
- Workbench as helpful for quick setups for Picos
- Rigs – are a subset of a setup (any collection of agents)
- setups moving to XML
- building instruments from agents (e.g.: analog synth)
- Geert demos one
- Antonio shows a WB setup
- attaching multiple instruments to a single EigenD or networked EigenDs
- Demo: adding a pico plus an alpha using Workbench
- modifying audio units in real time (via Workbench)
Posted in Tip.
Tagged with Clubhouse, Tip.
By Geert Bevin
– January 9, 2012
As I’ve been studying the Eigenharp during the last year, I recorded a number of compositions, sketches and covers on the instrument. This is a compilation of the best ones, hope you enjoy them.
Posted in Controllers, Live, Song.
Tagged with Analog synthesizer, Cover song, Eigenharp, Live, Moog, Musician, Original.
By Geert Bevin
– January 6, 2012
Eigenlabs has created a three-month rental scheme for the Pico and the Tau that allows you to conveniently try out an Eigenharp before committing to a full purchase. If you decide to go ahead and buy the instrument following your rental, they simply deduct the rental fee and return shipping fee that you have already paid, from the standard purchase price.
More information here:
http://www.eigenlabs.com/rental/
Posted in Controllers.
Tagged with Instrument, Pico, Rental, Tau, Try out.
By Geert Bevin
– January 6, 2012
