just wanted to notify you that a group of developers from the Eigenharp community is meeting this weekend for a developer workshop.
Eigenharps are electronic instruments that are produced by a British company. They don't produce sounds themselves but send control informations to a computer via a proprietary high resolution protocol. Each key can be moved in three axis (like 120 mini joysticks) and each axis can control individual parameters.
The goal of the company behind the Eigenharps is now to establish EigenD, the computer (PC/Mac) based software that currently produces the sounds for the Eigenharps as a new quasi-standard for upcoming instruments that run against the boundaries of today's protocols and synths. So they open sourced it and try to motivate people to contribute.
EigenD is all about manipulating a multitude of simultaneous parameters per note at high resolution with low latency - something that is less fascinating for keyboards that have very limited per note expressions but what is very welcome for new kinds of instruments that allow multidimensional per-note expression.
EigenD is a modular system that can be reconfigured arbitrarily at runtime. Currently a bunch of modules (so called "agents" already exists, e.g. physical simulations of cello- or clarinet oscillators, classical "analog synth" components, a sample player, an audio unit/VST host, modules that speak the native Eigenharp protocol, midi and (experimental)OSC in/out etc.
Currently there are a few things that are not open source yet - a multichannel audio out agent, Stage (an application to graphically manipulate parameters) and Workbench (an application to graphically rewire components). These commercial components might be released as open source with some delay (so the newest version can be sold and the open source version still has something to work with). (Without Stage and Workbench you have to use a textual command interface or you can play notes on the instrument which can also control all aspects of the system if you learn the underlaying "musical command language" Belcanto
)What we learn at the workshop is how to write new components for this modular system (they are written in C++ and Python).
So, if you are working on a DIY instrument for that existing software is limiting specifically regarding per-note expressions and thus might be a match for something like EigenD - now it might be your chance to give us some suggestions for components you'd like to see - perhaps somebody from the participants likes your idea and takes it up as a project
Or if you are a developer yourself - they plan to do recordings, so interested people can watch the workshop sessions offline afterwards via streaming.
Here an introduction
http://www.eigenlabs.com/wiki/2.0/Intro ... to_EigenD/
a list of currently existing EigenD agents.
http://www.eigenlabs.com/wiki/2.0/The_EigenD_Reference/
description of Belcanto (the musical control language):
http://www.eigenlabs.com/wiki/2.0/The_B ... roduction/
and a description of Workbench (the commercial graphical configuration environment):
http://www.eigenlabs.com/wiki/2.0/Workbench/
github repository with all the sources (1.4 is the stable version, 2.0 is the experimental version that supports Workbench - the one we will use in the workshop):
https://github.com/Eigenlabs/EigenD
Just a note for DIY people: The EigenD version 2 (that is compatible with the Workbench GUI) is currently still in an early development phase, so unless you want to develop new components (e.g. high resolution bindings for your specific instrument) and want up-front access to the Workbench for building setups with these components I peronally wouldn't advise to buy the commercial package right now - better wait a few months until things are more stable. The stable version of EigenD on the other hand currently mostly makes really sense if you have an Eigenharp - building new setups up from scratch without the GUI can be mindboggling and there only exist Eigenharp related pre-made setups atm. (But if you like learning new languages and are up for a challenge: This stable version can be built almost completely from the github sources - almost because Stage, the graphical control GUI (knobs, sliders etc.) is currently not open source yet. The only way to get the 1.4 commercial binaries with Stage is to buy an Eigenarp atm.)
Hope I could raise some interest (the more people catch fire the higher the probability that this takes off beyond the boundaries of the Eigenharp world).
If there is any interest I can post links to the workshop videos as soon as they are available.
Greetings,
NothanUmber (just an Eigenharp owner, developer workshop participant and general somebody who likes the concept of EigenD, not affiliated with that company in any way
)