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Hi n0x,

There's a couple of ways to do this, both of which involve altering the 'courses' on the Tau keyboard, which are the vertical columns of keys. Probably the easiest way to do this is to change the course offsets, ie the interval between the columns. By default this is a major third, and leads to all the duplicated notes. By setting the offset to a value the same as the vertical height of the keyboard, you can make course 2 start at the next note after the last one in course 1.

In eigenD 1.4.x and earlier you can do this by opening the eigencommander from the eigenD tools menu (or press Cmd-C), and enter the following lines of belcanto:

kgroup 1 listen

course 2 offset to 16 interval set

course 3 interval to 16 interval set

course 4 to 18 interval set

Oh, and I have just realized that this setup doesn't include flats or sharps. Is it possible to include them also?

Thanks again

when I try changing the scales it just resets back to how it was before (or appears to), without any of the changes made into the eigencommander

Sorry, I probably got the offsets wrong in the first script, you can adjust the numbers to suit your desired layout, but this is limited to sliding the columns around as you say.

To get the 4 column layout you need to restructure the keygroup mapping. What version are you using?
In 1.4.x you can remap the keygroup, but it's an error prone process, and will probably scramble the menus (like the instrument selection keys and drummer controls etc).

In 2.0 you can use workbench to alter your layout which is much easier.

Hi n0x

There's a key mapping editor in Workbench that allows one to re-arrange the keys in a keygroup as different courses and orders, both for physical and musical geometries (which are now separate in 2.0). This mapping editor is based on key coordinates (ie, it doesn't provide you with a visual representation of a Tau, it uses row/column pairs of numbers on each side of the mapping) although this is pretty easy to use as it also supports the existing choose mode so you can interact with the instrument while doing it.

This doesn't translate directly to notes as the scaler applies a scale after that, but in general there's already a scale to do what you want available, or if not you can quite easily define your own by editing the User Scales file (details are on the Wiki) with a text editor.

We're not likely to introduce this functionality outside of Workbench, it's really the sort of thing that tool was built for and it would be hard to think of a nice way to even include such a thing without writing a whole new application. The editor needs to exist in some kind of graphical framework that allows one to choose the relevant keygroup and find it's mappings. Stage is not a suitable candidate as it's fully networked using OSC, which is very neat for other reasons but means that the kind of interactions needed for the mapping editor are not trivial to implement.

So, to answer your question clearly, no, we're not likely to introduce that kind of editor outside of Workbench, for a number of reasons, mostly technical.

John

Hey 0beron,
That is amazing, thanks so much!
one final question - how can I set it up so that I can change tonics, scales, key? These seem to be disabled
I can still change instruments though, so it isn't such an issue
But thanks again!

Are you back in 1.4 now?
By disabled do you mean you can see them but they don't work, or that they have vanished?
It may be that you have to remap the keygroup on which those controls live (they occupy a mini keygroup of their own). Try the choose trick from above but with 'scale kgroup 1', then choose a little rectangle of keys that match where they were before? I don't know the Tau setups that well so this might not work.

I thought that 'tonic' and 'key' were the same thing when it came to scalers (by key here I mean musical key, not a physical plastic key!).

So are the scale controls not working anymore? The factory setup lets you change the scale, and the tonic. These controls might have been damaged by our layout changes.

In EigenD terminology, tonic is the starting note of a scale, from which the scale offsets are calculated. Scalers also have a 'base note' which defines which scale offset to start a keygroup at, for example if your tonic is C and you have a major scale, and the base note is 0, you get the notes C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C.. etc. If you change the tonic to D you get D,E,F#,G,A,B,C#,D ie D major. If instead you change the base note to 1, you get D,E,F,G,A,B,C,D, ie all the notes from C major, but starting from D.

To light up keys you can use the illuminator (back in the commander):

illuminator create

it to illuminator 1 name ify

tau keyboard 1 to illuminator 1 connect

illuminator 1 hey

physical as green choose