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This is on a Tau - but I suppose it would apply to any model.
THe tau sends aftertouch data immediately on striking a key - even if the key is struck so softly that it barely registers a velocity value. I use velocity and polyphonic aftertouch promiscuously in my synth programming (mostly this is Zebra, Plogue Bidule, Bazille, lately a little Reaktor) to control independent parameters. Is there any way to set things so that one can use the marvelous range the eigenharp makes possible for BOTH velocity and aftertouch, but still retain the ability to play the full velocity range - carefully avoiding actually depressing the key of course - without accidentally sending aftertouch? Maybe a setting that establishes a "safe zone" for a very small zone of key travel?

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this - 'carefully avoiding depressing the key' means that there's no way to actually calculate a MIDI style velocity. Do you mean that you don't want aftertouch sent for a brief while as the note starts, and then for it to return to normal after a preset time? Or do you want to be able to scale back the yaw sensitivity (or pressure sensitivity post the velocity calcuation) for a note startup time window (which if the yaw is being used to generate aftertouch would give you the same effect)? If so then it's possible we might be able to put something like this in for 2.1, would be nice to be very sure of what is wanted before writing anything though.

I hate MIDI. I can't believe that it's 2012 and we're having these kind of discussions, I find it surreal. I loved MIDI in 1987, but that's 25 years ago and we're still stuffing our performance data down a protocol designed for 8 bit microprocessors and 31.25k serial links. It's like playing Beethoven on a 4 bit audio device. The idea of a velocity at the start of a note is extremely crude and plain wrong in so many cases, it causes so many problems that we spend endless effort bodging around. Sigh. Complaining about the weather I guess!

John

I have been struggling with this problem as well as I had not come up with a decent way to infer initial velocity from the OSC data received from EigenD into my Max environment.

I finally made a hack to deal with this. I have MIDI turned on for the Alpha and the 120 keys on the Alpha have MIDI note numbers 1 through 120 assigned respectively.

So when a key is initially pressed and I start receiving OSC data for that key, I don't pass the OSC data on to the main system until I have received the corresponding MIDI Note On event for that key, at which point I now have a reasonable velocity value. That value is passed on and used as desired. OSC data is then allowed again for that key. I ignore any other MIDI data coming in (including NoteOff events)

Sorry, missed that you *did* say this was in Max.