in Electronic Music
Hi everyone,
Over the past year there’s been a lot of communication amongst Eigenharp players on Google+. Now that Google has created ‘Communities’, we can finally bring this all together in a central spot, making it easier to find and to collaborate.
Here’s the link towards the Eigenharp community:
https://plus.google.com/communities/113007469663952313892
See you there!
Geert
Posted in Controllers, Setup.
– December 7, 2012
We all know it’s not easy to find other Eigenharpists.
A new project, Musomap, can make this a lot easier for us. It provides everything you need to describe yourself as a musician, to locate yourself on a map and to connect with others.
Kahne, the creator, is extremely passionate about his dream to allow musicians to connect more easily.
Here’s my Musomap profile, what’s yours?
Sign up at:
http://www.musomap.com
Posted in Controllers.
– December 6, 2012
Stage iOS for EigenD 2 can be purchased from the iTunes Store by following this link: http://eigenlabs.com/stageios
Here’s an introduction video that highlights its features.
– December 6, 2012
A few months ago I set out to replace my MIDI guitar performance environment with a more flexible and intuitive solution. For various reasons I ended up using our own Eigenharp software, EigenD, even though I never intended to. One of the things that struck me over other solutions was that software synths felt much nicer to play. I always used to feel very disconnected from the musical performance and with my new setup this wasn’t as much the case anymore. I never had time to analyze why exactly, until research I did last week revealed a critical lack of MIDI time-stamping support in most plugin hosts and DAWs.
Let’s first get some basic terminology out of the way. Most timing aspects of electronic music can be described through latency and jitter.
Latency is a short constant delay that is introduced between the occurrence of an event and the actual perception of the audio.
Interestingly, musicians are extremely good at dealing with latency because it’s predictable and already present all around us. The simple fact that audio transits through air introduces latency. Hence, anybody that plays in a band naturally compensates for latency, resulting from the different positions of other band members on stage or in the rehearsal room. Pipe organists are possibly the most extreme example of our capacity to deal with latency, due to delays of up to hundreds of milliseconds caused by the physics of the pipes and the spaces they’re played in.
Jitter on the other hand describes a deviation from a steady signal and makes evenly spaced events come out scattered.
Posted in Configuration, Live, Software.
– December 4, 2012
A nice performance of Paul Harriman at the Electro Music festival 2012
Paul Harriman @ electro-music 2012 from Steve Mokris on Vimeo.
Posted in Controllers, Live.
– November 26, 2012
My Eigenharp iPad synth setup is getting insane, but at last is sounding great now, the upside is that there are many very cheap and amazing apps.
To me it’s turning out as a great alternative to hardware synths. The software is written for known devices and can be fully tested and supported by the creators. They don’t have to worry about compatibility problems and host differences, like with AudioUnits and VSTs. With an ultra-high speed MIDI interface like iConnectMIDI, the latency and throughput rates are so low that it feels more like a plugin than like an external synth, transmitting at USB speeds. The Matrix USB/SPDIF interface outputs the audio from the iPad digitally to my Metric Halo ULN-2 where I can mix it in with other audio and listen to it with a world-class headphone amplifier through my wonderful Bowers & Wilkins P5s. The sounds from Animoog, WaveGenerator, Magellan and Sunrizer can totally rival with computer software synths like this. At the same time I also use my Moog Slim Phatty to provide all the goodness of the analog sounds, it’s a great combination.
Sadly, the wires are becoming quite a mess, which is not optimal, but given the quality of the final solution and the affordability of the iPad synths, it’s actually a very economical solution since all the hardware can be reused amongst apps.
Interestingly, the multi-touch screen of the iPad makes synth developers think about per-note expression, which MIDI-centric computer solutions don’t do. The iPad synths might actually be quicker in offering a solution for the full expressivity of the Eigenharp, PPG WaveGenerator already does in its next version (which I’m testing) and it’s planned for Animoog also. I’m sure others will follow soon after that.
Exciting times!
Posted in Configuration, Controllers, Setup, Software.
– November 22, 2012
Very nice use of the Eigenharp Alpha with PianoTeq, this is a new video from António Machado.
Make sure to click ‘like’ on the YouTube video since this is an entry for the PianoTeq video contest.
Posted in Controllers, Demonstration, Live.
– November 9, 2012
Antonio posted a nice improvisation using PianoTeq and the Stummer of EigenD 2.
Here’s what he has to say about it:
Eigenharp Alpha, EigenD host plugin Modartt Pianoteq Stage Physically modelled piano.
Eigenharp Alpha in this setup has 12 independent courses, tuned tuned G1/C2/F2/A2/D3/G3 and the remaining 6 fixed notes G0-A0-B0-C1-D1-E1; this way using 12 midi ch for poly mode.
Ipad running Air Display
Posted in Controllers, Demonstration, Live.
– November 2, 2012
This is an original composition, played live on the Eigenharp Alpha and looped for some parts.
It uses a single sound on my Moog Slim Phatty for all the sections of the song. This one of the challenges that I’ve been setting for myself. I want to create only a few very expressive and versatile sounds that I perfectly learn to play on the Eigenharp in all their nuances, as opposed an arsenal of thousands of sounds that are totally unconnected from myself.
Here I’m driving the Slim Phatty over Control Voltage, giving me an incredibly detailed connection to the expression of the sound. This is possible thanks to the Expert Sleepers ES-3 module which converts the data from the Eigenharp over digital ADAT audio to Direct Current.
Pressure on the keys is tied to volume, left-right movement to filter cutoff and up-down movement to pitch. I’m additionally controlling distortion through the breath pipe of the Alpha and delay feedback through its strip controller, both are AudioUnit effects from Rob Papen. The looping is done through Mobius and is controlled through a Rig Kontrol USB MIDI footpedal.
This song can be downloaded from SoundCloud:
Posted in Controllers, Live, Song.
– October 19, 2012
