#33

Itā€™s just incredibly responsive in every dimension and feed great to play. The onboard DSP synthesizer sounds great too.

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#34

Trying color coded notes in a fourths layout because why not?

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#35

Thanks to advice from this community and then a trade, I now have a linnstrument. Itā€™s a real joy to play, especially with MPE synths (A Modor and Deckardā€™s Dream). Iā€™m wondering if anyone here has encountered good exercises for practicing with it? Could be sheet music, tab, whatever, just curious if anyone here has encountered or invented a disciplined way to improve their playing. If so, let me know!

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#36

I get great mileage out of practicing the Linnstrument as if it were a guitar. Same scales/exercises, etc.

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#37

Thanks! thatā€™s helpful, do you use all the same chord voicings? This is the part of the linnstrument that I feel is trickiest.

My hand has a hard time making the same chord shapes, rotated 90 degrees, as I would use to play chords on the guitar. Obviously, itā€™s easy enough if I use two hands. But then I feel like Iā€™m kind of not taking advantage of the spacious layout of the keys and when attempting something like a left hand bass/chords and right hand melody kind of thing, It feels a little tricky/cramped to play one-hand chords. Iā€™m trying to figure out other, more vertically splayed forms of familiar chords but havenā€™t gotten there yet.

#38

@rstn you are likely a better guitar player than I am! :wink:

These are the chord shapes I use.

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#39

Apologies if this doesnā€™t fit into the ā€œwhat are you doing withā€¦ā€ prompt of the thread, but as this seems to be one of the Linnstrument hubs in the forum ā€” does anyone have experience using both a Linnstrument and a Sensel Morph? Iā€™m curious about the differences in physical sensitivity / configurability between these two.

I currently have a Morph, and while itā€™s really responsive in some ways, I feel like the lighter-pressure-responsiveness needs tuning that Senselā€™s apps donā€™t provide. For example, the ā€œsensitivityā€ seems to control a pressure threshold after which a note on or off is sent, rather than defining a curve or something like a velocity delta. The result for me is that it takes more pressure than I expect to trigger a note-on, and a note-off comes sooner than Iā€™d like. Does the Linnstrument exhibit problems like this when playing with light pressure?

#40

I have been using 16 of the pads for cc-control. This works really well!

I am still only scratching the surface of my Linnstrument, but my favorite things are:

The layout: As a guitar player I never got comfortable with the piano layout of midi kayboards.

Pitch bend: Even in monophonic mode being able to slide and use vribrato is SO nice!

After touch/expression: Like mentioned before, using 16 pads to mirror 16 knobs is great.

I am demonstrating it 40 minutes into this interview: https://youtu.be/iZut6Ksv5I0?t=2440

#41

The linnstrument is a very sensitive instrument. Velocity and pressure sensitivity are also adjustable on the unit, using the global settings area.

I havenā€™t tried a Haken Continuum yet, and I get the impression that its Hall effect sensors may be even more sensitive than the Linnstrumentā€™s FSR array, but compared to the Roli Seaboard Grand (which cost multiples of the Linnstrument price) I found the Linnstrument to be responsive, consistent, and reliable.

#42

Having owned a roli, linnstrument and continuum (in that order) Iā€™ve found the Continuum to be the most sensitive and interesting to play. I didnā€™t like the lack of movement on the linnstrument at all tbh. The continuum allows you to tap, push, scrape etc. Iā€™m so many different ways (with tactile feedback) which invoke different sounds so beautifully from the Eaganmatrix synth.

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#43

A scrape is a very subtle gesture! Impressive. Usually requires mics to pick up something so subtle.

#44

Itā€™s partly down to the sound design of course but itā€™s certainly a surface which allows multiple ways of playing.

#45

Whatā€™s your go-to sound when you want to practice or play right away? I love sound design but not when I want to get right to playing. And sound choice can be the difference between feeling like youā€™re playing an expressive instrument or like youā€™re tapping on a table since Linnstrument has very little physical feedback.

#46

Guitar or other plucked string instruments. Itā€™s sometimes nice if pressure or slide brings in some kind of granular or delay effect, but not strictly necessary.

Guitar was my first instrument, and the one I still feel most connected to, even when playing an abstracted electronic form. There is also something about the layout and ergonomics of linnstrument that lends itself to guitar.

Iā€™m also fond of mallet sounds on the linnstrument.

If youā€™ve got a nice velocity-responsive sharp attack, and then layer in some kind of pressure-sensitive pad or effect for sustain, this covers a lot of linnstrumentā€™s expressive territory. And pitch bends also make sense for stringed instruments, as well as wind instruments to a lesser degree. So, upright bass, and woodwinds are also favorites.

Iā€™m terrible at playing acoustic flute, but I sound halfway decent at it on a linnstrument.

I strongly recommend trying Roliā€™s Equator2. Theyā€™ve done the sound design for you. I love experimenting with MPE and Iā€™ve found exciting sounds in all sorts of places, but if I just want to power up and play the way I would with an acoustic instrument, there are a few favorited patches in Equator2 that I can rely on to deliver with zero fuss.

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#47

Iā€™ll have to check out Equator2. Iā€™ve been finding that most synths are ā€œdialed inā€ for keyboard for obvious reasons but I didnā€™t think of that before getting a Linnstrument. In practice this means fiddling with velocity and pressure settings per sound to get it to feel right. A synth already dialed in for MPE would be stellar. Ironically monophonic sounds seem to ā€œjust workā€ but there might be a hint of bias there since Iā€™m a bassist and given a 4th tuning I can figure a bass line out more intuitively than chords.

#48

Once you get something like Equator2 under your fingers you can move beyond ā€œthis doesnā€™t sound as good as it would with an ordinary keyboardā€ and start thinking critically about ā€œwhat makes a guitar sound like a guitar, and a flute sound like a flute, and how can I adjust my playing technique for more realism?ā€ Or alternatively, ā€œhow can I push the limits of what five dimensions of expression mean in electronic music?ā€ (Which isnā€™t likely to resemble any acoustic instrument at all, yet somehow benefits from all the ā€œrealismā€ exploration you did before.)

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#49

I purchased a Linnstrument at the beginning of January after thinking about it for over a year. Iā€™m quite excited for it! Has anyone been using it with Live 11? Is it pretty plug and play with the MPE mode?

#50

Yep! Just works. ā€¦

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#51

Given that my original instrument was bass, Linnstrumentā€™s lights on the natural notes havenā€™t felt like much of a help to me. I donā€™t think in terms of white keys and black keys; I think in terms of hand positions, and fingering patterns for intervals and scales. What I really wanted was ā€œfret markers.ā€ Today I realized that the screws on the Linnstrument are all spaced 5 semitones apart - fourths. Not the same spacing as fret markers but since I can feel the screws with my thumb without looking down it is already making it easier to orient hand positions.

#52

You can also configure the light patterns to match bass or whatever intervals you like!

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