#41

I guess I sidetracked a bit into a whole mushy MPE bashing, but it’s good to hear that some (most?) of the controllers are more responsive than I would have thought.

#42

Working on making more Soundplanes available. Nothing like a firm timeline yet. I’m still setting up the Labs in my new location and figuring major things out like, will I do my own CNC this time around?

I think the Soundplane Model B is going to be a bit smaller than the original, but not much. The playable area might actually be a bit longer on the x axis. The idea is not to make a controller pad—instead something that you can make big (or anyway, medium-sized) expressive gestures on.

The Soundplane’s got no off-the-shelf sensors, we build our own—so development is sometimes slow but I can tune the playing feel to be exactly what I want. Longevity has always been a big concern of mine too, and in rolling my own I don’t have to worry about suppliers of some fancy custom sensor coming up short or going out of business. Haken and monomes have been great inspirations in this approach, of course.

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#43

Randy, will the next-gen Soundplane be standalone or hooked up to a computer?

(Oh, and thanks everybody for a very informative and interesting discussion! Here’s another guitar player who’s disappointed in all the MIDI interfaces ever… But always wanted to try a Soundplane!)

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#44

interesting statement - what do you mean by controller pad? less focused on playing notes on a grid? is this a different/similar objective, to what you had for the soundplane A?

Ive played with a few ideas in the past, using the Soundplane for expression outside ‘playing notes’ , as you say more ‘gestural’ - it worked really nicely for this.

just seen this come thru on Cycling74, which I think is kind of in line with this, and is very interesting/impressive.

#45

Affordability was one problem. There were others. Stubbornness by the designer/owner to not provide requested documentation and support was larger, IMO. People couldn’t figure out how to configure the instrument for playing.

Once Geert Bevin started developing its software things really took off in the player community. Unfortunately, this was at the last stages of the company. Geert, by the way, is chief software developer for the Linnstrument.

#46

I’ve seen Geert helping folks in the Linnstrument forums, both with typical support stuff and with rather experimental hacking. Really great community-minded musician and firmware ninja. We are lucky to share a planet. Another plus in the Linnstrument column.

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#47

Can’t wait to see/hear more about this, very intriguing!

#48

I bought a RISE 25 for a very low price during the recent KVR auction. I’m actually quite happy with it. I could understand why a keyboardist would hate it, but as a guitarist who sucks at keyboards, I’m happy.

A few notes:

  1. I’m extremely impressed with Cycling 74’s all-in support for MPE. The MPE objects and bPatchers made with ROLI are very high quality. Every single one worked on both Windows and OS X the very first time I tried it (which, in the world of boutique controllers, is unfortunately a rarity). One of the really cool bPatchers is a step sequencer where you set each step with the vertical position on each key. I’ve been creating MPE mini-instruments and effects in Max, mainly because…

  2. MPE support sucks on most DAWs. Ableton Live doesn’t support it at all right now, which is a huge disappointment (I didn’t realize this before purchasing). Weird how Cycling is all-in but Ableton is behind. Even setting up RISE->Aalto in Bitwig was more fiddly than I would have liked (you have to right click on Aalto’s box in Bitwig and select “Force MPE Mode”; this took a bit of forum diving).

  3. Equator is a very impressive software bonus. There’s a lot of depth to the synth, and it’s very easy setting up MPE modulation targets.

  4. I haven’t tried Bluetooth or iOS interaction yet. The whole idea of using this massive keyboard with my iPad seems pretty humorous. I haven’t tried Blocks yet, either, but I’m buying a set the moment the developer box goes on sale.

  5. Regarding @Rodrigo’s theory of “shitty MPE”, I definitely spent half an hour tweaking the velocity and sensitivity curves to my liking. The ROLI Dashboard that comes with it allows you to save a curve profile to the keyboard. The pitch bend, vertical slide, and pressure curves can be modified directly from the hardware interface, which is a nice touch (alternatively, they can switch into CC mode). I think a lot of that sound comes from demos of people trying to play it like a regular keyboard, where most videos of the Continuum and Soundplane feature musicians who are very aware of the different paradigm.

  6. The main reason I bought one is to add MPE support to Unfiltered Audio’s future instrument releases. As a developer, I can say that the SDK that ROLI has released through JUCE is very nice and intuitive. Again, this goes back to point 1: I’m excited about how much support they’ve given to developers through multiple avenues.

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#49

+1 on this…
Bitwig is ‘ok’, however , I think Cubase sets the benchmark, its visualisation/editing of per note expression is very good.

I’ll say, mostly I just dont bother with recording midi and just recording audio rather than MIDI, so can use any daw. (as i dont route midi thru the host)

I do hope Ableton add multi channel midi support in Live 10 though, will make things a little easier.

4 Likes
#50

If anyone from Ableton’s listening, this +20!

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#51

Randy, will the next-gen Soundplane be standalone or hooked up to a computer?

It’s connected the same way as the Model A, and mostly the same electronics. Major redesign of mechanical aspects.

The planned outboard CV box is my route to a “computerless” setup. It’s a more modular approach that should help keep costs more reasonable.

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#52

I just meant something little as opposed to something big.

#53

Stubbornness by the designer/owner to not provide requested documentation and support was larger, IMO. People couldn’t figure out how to configure the instrument for playing.

That was my big frustration. They seemed so hung up on the idea of the Eigenharp as an instrument that configuring it was a huge pain in the ass. Even doing something like setting scale and key required memorization of a weird set of button presses (do you touch or hold? which keys for scale? which for root? oh no I just selected key split how do I undo that?) when software could have done it. Software caught up, eventually, but by then it seemed dead.

Anyone want to buy a Tau?

#54

I had a chance to play with the Roli Blocks at the Apple Store in Palo Alto this evening. My impressions:

  • The build is lovely - you want to hold them, snap them apart and together, and to touch them.
  • These seem to take a lot of force - but it could have been the settings on the synth?
  • Response of the synths/drums didn’t feel consistent - but again, could have been the app?
  • The note grid isn’t playable:
    • 5x5 is too small to really maneuver on, even when set to scale mode.
    • With no physical boundaries, at that size, it is far too easy to hit the edge of the wrong note.
    • The layout in scale mode is awkward for playing chords: The 6th is above the root, and it didn’t work well - compounded by the fact that you need change fingerings for the same chord to just keep it on the grid.
      (For calibration: I’m an active 8x8 isomorphic grid player with a Launchpad Pro - and love both scale and chromatic modes there.)
  • In 4x4 drum pad mode, it wasn’t all that much better. Still too easy to hit the wrong “pad”.
  • Bluetooth MIDI, at least for MPE, had very noticeable latency. Alas, they didn’t have a USB tethered set up to try.
  • The iPad app is surprisingly unintuitive for something trying to be so simple.

If they are aiming for the “just swipe around on it and something fun and musical will come out” - they may have hit it spot on. If they are aiming for “an expressive and playable instrument”, seems like they missed by a mile. I really wanted to like these… but no dice.

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Roli Blocks
#55

I finally had a chance to try their updated Noise app (that didn’t require me to sign in), and it seemed like the app has a lot of latency even when just using the phone (without external hardware)… It’s not clear if this is because of 3D Touch, or what, and there weren’t really any settings or places where I could see if things were quantized, so it might be the app.

This has been my experience with every Bluetooth MIDI thing that I’ve tried, and it’s really quite unfortunate. Do the Blocks support USB?

#56

Yes they do, but in the Apple Store they are all set up with Bluetooth.

#57

another MPE devices just appeared on Kickstarter…

this actually really looks quite playful… at 260 euros, pretty cheap fun… and quite small (portable)
250hz response is not very fast, but probably ok.

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#58

That one reminded me a bit of of the sensel morph, and both remind me a little of KMI’s tech. I was frustrated enough with the Quneo that I’m hesitant about all of these lower cost things at this point. But it sure would be nice if one of them turned out to be great!

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#59
#60

Ok, so I think I might go a DIY route with this. I realize that with the grid/arc, I have binary and (knob-based) continuous stuff covered, so no need to double-down on any of that kind of stuff. So having something that focuses exclusively on funky controls would be the way to go.

At the moment I’m thinking something that’s arc4 sized, but that might be a needlessly compact restriction. Either way I’m thinking the width of the newschool grid/arc, so it would fit well in that setup.

I’ve not done this kind of touch stuff before in Arduino-land, but I’m imagining (hoping) it’s not too difficult or different from regular analog-y reading stuff.

With this many continuous inputs I may consider going HID instead of MIDI since I’d want to have higher resolution outputs from the continuous stuff, and it would swallow up a huge amount of CCs if everything is doubled up with MSB/LSB. (But at the same time, HID wouldn’t allow LED feedback, so there’s that too)

So here’s a quick sketch:

controller.jpg3264×2448 1.33 MB

On the left would be some piezo-based barres (ala ciat-lonbarde Tetrax):

tetrWEB.jpg1000×789 114 KB

Then some Manta/Rene/PressurePoints-like ‘touch’ pads (where pressure = skin conductivity), with possible backlighting/LED feedback:

Then finally on the right, something like a small array of touch points that would be used to control cross modulation and repatching in software, ala Mocante:

mocante.jpg800×426 146 KB

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