This is a quick unfinished experiment with hooking up the internal synth agents of EigenD to create a virtual modular synth.
The audio recording without compression can be downloaded from SoundCloud:
This sound uses two rectangle oscillators with one heavily detuned and one sine oscillator for a little more body. One envelope generator handles the volume of the oscillators and a second one handling the frequency cutoff of a ladder filter into which all oscillators are patched. The key pressure modulates the entire volume of the filter envelope generator. Finally, this is sent into the multi-tap delay agent.
It’s worth noting that all these agents are designed for multi-timbral playing and that all expression signals are separate for each key that is played. From the signal coming out of the keyboard all the way through to the ladder filter, all data is separate. After the filter, everything is summed together before going through the delay and the console mixer.
Amidst the general-purpose computing platforms (laptop, iPad), and latest iterations of the conventional synthesizer (keyboard, knobs), the quest to build something genuinely specific, self-contained, and unique drives on. These creations are strange breeds, evolutionary singularities that aim to embody something the more generic instruments of our age lack: personality and soul. They’re the kind of object you might want to practice for years, to treat in their digital, “post-mechanical” form the way you would a violin or piano. They have a feel, more than the smooth surface of a trackpad or plane of multitouch glass, something that pushes back when you push it.
And while many such creations have shown up in proof-of-concept demos and academic conferences, the Eigenharp is an instrument a small but growing community of players are embracing in the long haul.
bar|none has been very active on the Eigenlabs forums recently and has picked up the prototype OSC agent to generate CV messages through Max and Silent Way. Check his technical demo out!
Striving for higher resolution electronic instruments to connect the player to the sound the old-fashioned way.
This is a technical demonstration, meaning, I finished the technical coding, hooked it up, patched the simplest thing I could on the modular and started noodling.
The way this works is that since EigenD (eigenharps platform) is now open source, we’ve (with the help of eigenlabs) been able to crack it open a bit for hacking. We now have an OSC agent which pumps an insane volume of raw data out of the harp ready for some experimental harvesting.
In this demo, I have a MAX patch which sanitizes the data, and makes it expressly fit for translation to control voltage of a modular.
Some data points here. EigenD sends 2000 events per control point per second. Per note there are 3 high res control points per note (pressure, yaw, pitch). So that is 6000 events per sec translated over the wire into voltage. 2 more control points require voltage which are pitch and cv. That means using an audio interface for cv, you need 5 audio outs per level of polyphony. 5 outs for monophonic, 10 outs for duophonic, and up.
Luckily, monophonic is pretty amazing, duophonic is an incredible luxury and 3 levels is showing off.
After I have prototyped this, I could see writing an EigenD agent expressly to do this directly, making the eigenharp modular friendly out of the box.
I however have to mention that this would not be possible without Expert Sleepers Silent Way plugins as the OSC to CV bridge. Nor would it be possible without MAX in this prototype stage.
Moog released Animoog today as their first synthesizer on the iPad and I absolutely love it!
This video gives a brief overview of the Animoog’s features and also shows how expressive it is when played with an Eigenharp Pico over MIDI using poly-pressure.
The Eigenharp and Animoog seems like a match made in heaven since the Eigenharp is able to send three independent detailed per-note performance data streams and the Animoog is able to react to this on a per-note level. Also, the visualization of the sound on the Animoog is marvelous, it gives a great representation of what your sound is doing.
The iPad is hooked up to my MacBook Pro using USB MIDI from the Alesis iODock, the Eigenharp Pico is also hooked up to the laptop and sends MIDI from the EigenD application to the ‘dock’ MIDI port. This uses a small MIDI-only Eigenharp Pico setup that loads very quickly and provides 16 MIDI playing keys with poly-pressure and three independent data streams for each key (pressure, left/right, up/down), as well as two 3D controller keys that are somewhat similar to little joysticks and are sending each three independent streams of MIDI CC data also.
The recent interest from developers in contributing to EigenD through open-source has piqued my motivation for writing code in my spare time also. Was up ’till 2h30am yesterday doing so. It’s been a long time since I coded this late. I’m going to add a few more examples for developers to start out, really simple ones that show just the architectural parts and little functionality in the agents themselves. Still need to add comments, but the ones I finished are a Latch agent and an Angle/Radius agent. These effective change of the data streams coming from the Eigenharp keys work.
The Latch agent uses pressure as a latch for the roll and yaw values (while also forwarding pressure), a configurable threshold for the pressure decides whether the yaw and roll values are sent on. If the pressure is below that threshold, the last values of yaw and roll are sent instead of the real ones.
This effectively turns the keys into two-dimensional knobs that stay in place when you let them go, very handy to use with soft-synth knobs or knobs in Mainstage.
The Angle/Radius agent uses Yaw/Roll as X/Y coordinates for a point on a Euclidean grid with the key resting position as the origin. The distance from the point to the origin is the Radius value and the angle described by the segment from the origin to the point is the Angle value.
This makes it possible to tie an Eigenharp key directly to the Orb control in Omnisphere. It’s very nice to move the Eigenharp key and to see its position correspond directly to the position of the dot on screen inside the Orb.
Any other primitive agents that you’d like to see?
It’s impossible for me to imagine a world without C or Unix, they have been the foundations of most things that I’m using all the time, every day. Dennis Ritchie, together with Kenneth Thompson, created both. On October 8th, Dennis Ritchie passes away at the age of 71.
The story of how these two people both created a programming language and operating system clearly illustrates how sheer passion and enthusiasm easily trumps a massive development team. During my own career as a software developer I’ve tried to follow the same approach as much as possible. Sometimes I’m still amazed at the results that can be achieved alone or with a very small team.
Thanks for everything you’ve created, Dennis Ritchie, without the foundations you laid out, it would be a very different computer age.
Geert describes the barebones MIDI setup, including joystick control of MIDI CC
Discussion on scripts to light root notes
Discussion with Chrissie Caulfield regarding her interest in the Eigenharp
Quick demo from Geert using a Soniccouture Le Cristal Kontakt plugin
Another demo of Soniccouture HangDrum from their PanDrums Kontact plugin and Antonio’s accordion
A demo of Geert’s excellent guitar-style playing using the top 6 percussion keys as strings
Discussion of key sensitivity
Cello model
Antonio’s Accordian
Lighting key notes
Eigenharp menus and LEDs
General info on cabling and basestations
Overview of Pico
Overview of Tau
General discussion
Arrangement of songs for the Eigenharp
Larry talks about his process for learning the Eigenharp and using the Wiki
Discussions on use of the new MIDI only setups, experimental music control, Ableton instruments
Using one or more Pico’s for controlling effects and instruments, including the use of an Alpha and a Pico simultaneously in a single instance of EigenD. Use of multiple Eigenharps over network connections, each controlling separate attributes. Also the use of Stage using multiple devices and respect given to John Cage!
Thanks for everything Steve! You’ve made technology human, accessible to everyone without having to understand the deeper layers. It’s thanks to you that my daughters use their iPods and Macs with such ease, doing such amazing tasks, that when I was young were only imagined by the geekiest of boys. I think you’ve made the world a better place and I’ll always remember you.
As you said in your Stanford commencement speech, I hope you lived your last days as fully as possible in your condition, without regrets. I’ve always looked up to you and will continue doing so, hoping that somehow I’ll be able to contribute a tiny piece myself to the happiness and lives of the other people in the world.
Here’s the video of his Stanford commencement speech in case you haven’t seen it before.
