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Well, that was a fun afternoon :) The Tau arrived at lunchtime, and I've been playing with it ever since. One thing that I've quickly discovered is that both the upright position and the guitar position are not compatible with my illness. For those who don't know, I'm diagnosed with CFS/Fibromyalgia with the symptoms of the illness very much like relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. My strength and stamina are a fraction of what they used to be.

I've quickly come to the conclusion that I am probably going to have to play this on a stand or a table. I randomly twitch and shake at times, and this is picked up by the eigenharp when supported by the body. However, I'm able to use a lot of expression without any obvious twitches when I play the Tau horizontally.

This has 2 serious downsides:

1. Breath Pipe
It is virtually impossible to use the breath pipe when the Tau is in this postion. Is it possible to fix tubing to the breath pipe and extend it so that there is a tube/mouthpiece on a fixed microphone stand - so I can lean in and blow when needed?

2. The Ribbon Strip.
This is now completely blocked to me. Is it possible to somehow map the ribbon strip to another controller within EigenD - i.e. an Apple Magic Touchpad? The cello modeller is what initially interested me in the Eigenharp range, as I used to be a professional violinist prior to falling ill.

If the answer to both questions are a no, then I still have an amazing instrument and I'll be able to do a hell of a lot with it :)

Thanks Eigenlabs! I'm in heaven :)

[Edit] Picture of rig

This is how I plan to play the Tau (whenever I get around to affording one!) I really wish they had a table based model, named OMEGA. I would be all over it.
For the ribbon controller you could use a stand like this to access it.

Thanks for the replies :)

I'll have a go at using silicon tubing to extend the breathpipe from the metal part to the mouthpiece.

Re: the ribbon controller, I'm going to be using mostly AU's, so I'll try to find a way to map the touch pad to the ribbon strip via some kind of midi voodoo. I hope that I can find a way to be able to use the eigenlabs cello though.

http://www.eigenlabs.com/forum/threads/id/1066/

Unfortunately right where the mouthpiece is split in half there are in fact three airways, one from each of the little pressure sampling holes on the front of the mouthpiece and one large central one for the bypass air.

Nice thought though!

I have been giving this issue quite a bit of thought over the last few days and may have had a useful, if probably not terribly pretty, idea. If I get time over the next couple of weeks I may try and make a crude prototype, I'll keep you posted if I do.

John

Thanks so much for putting your heads together. Sorry I missed the other recent thread. I have to be selective with what I read as I only have so much processing power each day. The fatigue has made it very hard lately to do much reading at all.

Re: any customisation, I'm not interested in pretty so much John, rather functionality. I had a play tonight using the breathpipe in the cello position, using the cello sound on chromatic tuning, and it was amazing. It really did feel like I was playing a stringed instrument again. Its just too uncomfortable though to sustain that position for too long.

I still have a lot that I can do using all the other features of the tau, but any ideas that you might have, please give me a prod.

[goes back into lurk/reading/playing mode]

:)