Forum Archive

1. Sticky endzones.

PROBLEM: The slider sensor doesn't go as far as you think it does - and when you get past the end, the pitch slips back to the center.

SOLUTION: the sticky endzone. When the pitch bend sensor stops sending AND its last position was at or close to the left or right ends, simply don't change the pitch bend!

This is very performance practical. You can zip your finger to the end and take it away, prance around a bit, and then grab it again and bring it back to the middle. It's impossible to "get stuck" because just a touch on the slider unsticks it (ideally, this wouldn't be "back to zero" but rather "relative to the end zone", you can get back to zero by removing your finger.

It's great for bowing because you don't have to be careful anymore, you can bow as far up and down as you like.

And my guess is that it's a comparatively small change to the software. If it were open-sourced, I'll bet I could do it myself. ;-)


2. wonky pitches on impact: fix with a pitch gate.

PROBLEM: when you play e.g. the bass sound and you don't hit the keys dead center, the pitch is not quite on.

SOLUTION: a pitch gate. If this is turned on, then you suppress for a short time pitch bend from a key if it's less than a certain amount.

Er, kinda easier to program than to explain (hah! if only it were so!) - let's have an example.

Let's suppose that our gate settings are 30 milliseconds (30ms) and 10 cents (10% of a semitone in pitch). Then for 30ms after we hit a key, the software won't report any pitch bends less than 10 cents.

In other words, any pitch bend that is held long enough or is far enough is clearly intentional, but short, small ones should be suppressed.


3. The full display.

PROBLEM: No idea what's going on with the instrument, must stop and look down at it.

SOLUTION: The full display, a complete display on your computer of every parameter on your Eigenharp and its current state - so a "clone" of the lights on the machine, as well as text explaining what exactly is going on.

Enough said, everyone wants that. :-D

4. Sequencing of parameters.

PROBLEM: Need to switch between instruments and make other adjustments during a song.

SOLUTION: All parameters need to be sequenceable!

I'm particularly interested in scale patterns because that's where the fun is. Imagine playing Coltrane's Giant Steps where the computer was doing the chord changes for you...

agree with all your points... number 2 - wonky notes is quite annoying but I'm guessing both 1 & 2 will be addressed so each player can programme their own individual set up

I love number 3!!!

that is a great idea

Amazing stuff here - quite the pleasure to read.

So I have an interesting solution I'd like to trot out to you. I'm actually doing basically the same thing in Javascript right now... and JS and Python are very similar (I was surprised to find out how advanced JS is really!)

You have far too many parameters to build a GUI for all of it. So don't try.

Do it in simple description text files that the musician edits in a text editor.

For all the preprogrammed stuff, scales and settings and assignments and all, all of these are stored in text files - as JSON, which is basically just Python data, dictionaries and lists, you can directly eval() it, it's freeform, you can put whitespace and comments in it...

So the musician sits down with a text editor and clones your settings files and edits them to make their own settings and sequences.

Reading and writing JSON is very easy. When you add a new thing, it more or less automatically gets written out to new data files - you don't have to add to a GUI. The musician doesn't have to break his wrist with all this point and click. You can mail parts of it around.

Everyone wins!

(And I should add that the "data" files can be very interesting. You have the full expressive power of Python from within the file - and you can add a context to the evaluation as well...)

Hi Tom

That kind of scripted, file based configuration is available in EigenD aready, and will be forming the cornerstone of the next step for users, the one between just using the setups we build, and the full Belcanto/Workbench environment, This will allow users to run Belcanto scripts by selecting and clicking on them in the browser, and yes, if they can use a text editor they will be able to write them too, although we're not documenting or supporting this as yet. The Pico factory setup is actually built using a series of Belcanto scripts right now, scripts that Sam wrote. We'll probably release that at the same time as the script browser, so that you can see what they are capable of.

The idea of having the overall state of the system reflected in editable text files has been tried, but it got rather too complicated to be manageable quite a while ago, and speeds were woefully slow as the system grew. The overall state of EigenD is now managed by our setup manager, which has some interesting and useful properties. Its a litte bit like a revision control system, and in years to come I suspect will become one of the most important elements of EigenD, although today its effectively invisible. The easier way for users to manipulate the system is definitely through the Belcanto scripts I just mentioned.

John

Pitch gate - if our system was like MIDI, where the initial velocity is the big determining factor this would make great sense, but it doesn't really work this way. The better way is to turn down the pitch bend range or change the pitch bend to have a different curve with a flatter middle. Both of these things are possible, and have been used by learners here, and we'll be introducing an easy, GUI'ish, non Workbench way to do this very (next week or two) shortly.

Has THIS been released yet?

Sorry for all the questions, but I'm just now going through all the posts and a lot of the questions in old posts are the dsame ones I also have and I'm wondering if they have ever been resolved.

Tony

At the "hospital" meet, John mentioned an iPhone app. Is that anywhere near release?

What would the iPhone app actually DO?

Tony

What would be really great would be if we could put custom macros on it too, ie. use it as extra "mode" type buttons for the instrument.