Erae Touch - All-around MIDI 2.0 controller?

[BONES]

Wouldn't a standard slider work as a ribbon controller?

[Kevin63101]

Wouldn't a standard slider work as a ribbon controller?

I would think so, but haven't figured out how to map relative pitch bend yet. Hoping for some guidance as the app assignment process is still a learning curve with limited examples.

[GuyaGuy]

Custom.jpg


This is my first custom layout. Across the bottom is two octaves of keys. Each key is three lights wide but the edges are black so you only see the "fill" column. I find it more visually appealing than the inverse, which is how Erae does it by default. And when you press a key, all three light up. If you increase pressure, it will light up more surrounding lights without triggering adjacent notes. i.e. It is a purely visual cue of how much pressure you're applying.

The top row is another row of keys, as are the three big pads in the centre. My thinking is that I'll mostly play the bigger keys at the bottom, I'll use the big pads as drum triggers and the top row of keys can either be to play a different instrument or just to play in a different octave to the main keyboard.

The colours are really washed out in the photo but in person they are bright orange and bright green. Customising colours is a breeze and sending stuff between the device and the computer is really simple, too. The only downside is that, on PC, the device can't communicate with the Erae Lab app and your DAW at the same time. That means you can't easily tweak things to get them perfect but that's not really a big issue for me.

The +/- buttons on the left side of the device allow you to change the octave separately for each "element", depending on which you last played. Each element can also be set to a different MIDI channel, so you can control multiple instruments at once.

I love playing this device. It is far less fiddly than a Seaboard, without feeling less responsive at all. The keys/buttons are bigger than on a Lightpad Block, which makes them much easier to play without having to stare at the device to make sure you hit your target squarely every time. And I don't get any of that accidental triggering of adjacent notes that happens all the time with my Roli stuff. If Embodme can iron out the glitches, which they seem very confident about, then this will be worth every penny. For a first gen device, it is already very accomplished.

Hey there, I'm new to the Touch. Can you let me know how this kind of 2 octave keyboard is setup?

The only way I could figure out to do it is to make the E and B 1 "light" wide and reverse the background/edge. It works but it means those keys are narrower. Is there another option?

Screenshot 2024-04-06 at 6.22.48 PM.png

[BONES]

No, that is definitely a limitation of the way you can lay out key sin an Erae Touch and you'll probably find that those narrower keys will make it harder to play, because you'll have dead "pixels" either side.

[GuyaGuy]

No, that is definitely a limitation of the way you can lay out key sin an Erae Touch and you'll probably find that those narrower keys will make it harder to play, because you'll have dead "pixels" either side.

Cool, thanks. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't overlooking something!

I'm just playing with the editor til mine gets here but I'll probably try something like this.