Forum

Dear All

I'm pleased to announce that today EigenD 2.0 has been formally released. It is now our supported software version for all the Eigenharps. The Base version can be purchased and downloaded from here and the Pro version from here. The documentation (including the new Workbench tutorials) can be seen here.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of the contributors and community members who have helped test and develop EigenD 2.0. We started working on Workbench all the way back in 2010 and it's been a challenging project. Without your input and assisance it would not have been possible and I think that, thanks to you all, 2.0 is our most stable and most performant release yet. You know who you all are: please accept a big 'thank you' from all the team here, and have a great time playing your 'harps.


Here is the formal announcement:


EigenD 2.0 is the latest stable release of the Eigenharp operating software for Windows 7.0 and MacOS X. It is a major upgrade from the 1.4 series and contains many new features along with a significant number of bug fixes and stability improvements on all platforms.

EigenD is now available in two versions. The base version provides all of the functionality needed for performance, including the networked control application Stage and all software instruments and EigenD Agents needed for a setup. The Pro version includes the important new configuration tool, Workbench, which facilitates the extensive creation and customisation of setups in an intuitive graphical environment.

2.0 Base includes a number of important new features:

Several new EigenD Agents.

* Strummer, which enables setups where one group of keys can act as 'strings' to be fingered and another group of keys can modulate those in the style of a plucked or strummed guitar. This Agent makes many new playing styles possible on the Eigenharp. It can also be used with the breath controllers, and new experimental setups are provided for players of the Alpha, Tau and Pico to explore the possibilities.

* Fingerer, which enables the player to play using wind style, valved fingerings with the addition of polyphony, bringing new chromatic range and possibilities to the Pico in particular. By the simple editing of a text file players can also experiment with their own fingerings, and the fingerings provided as standard include some to make transitioning from the Sax or Clarinet easy. A new Pico experimental setup is provided for players to experiment with.

* Illuminator, which provides extensive control over the lights on an Eigenharp, including the ability to control them via a Web interface and display scrolling messages during performance, along with the ability to create 'marker lights' on their keyboards to aid performance. The new experimental Strummer setup uses Illuminator to provide indicator dots for the Tau and Alpha in the style of the guitar.


In addition, 2.0 Base has a large number of performance improvements and changes designed to make the environment more powerful and useful to the musician, including new concepts in key layouts (separating the musical and physical arrangements of keys), improved speed and memory utilisation, multiple audio input/outputs and many smaller improvements in the handling and processing of performance data.

2.0 Pro contains the features of 2.0 Base, with the addition of Workbench, the new configuration and customisation tool.

It is no exaggeration to say that this tool represents a major advance for Eigenharp players and EigenD users, making the creation of highly customised setups easy and opening up a whole world of possibilities that was previously only accessible to the most technically inclined. The product of a three year development process, it contains a large number of features and has been extensively used and tested in the last year prior to our first stable release. The base EigenD system itself has had many improvements added to support Workbench, including the new Rigs, the separation of musical and physical key coordinates and hundreds of small improvements to individual Agents to help them work well in the new environment.

Several new top level setup categories have been created and all of the existing Eigenharp Factory setups, along with a number of new 'Experimental' and 'Example' setups have now been built from scratch using Workbench. It is now possible to create a basic playing setup in just a few minutes, and a series of tutorials to help players to do just that are provided as part of the now extensive online documentation.


From today the 1.4 series will no longer be supported although 1.4.12 will remain available for free download while it still remains operable (ie, until the operating system vendors break it).


John

Congrats, well done, and many many thanks to all at Eigenlabs. For me the path to 2.0 has been like discovering the EigenD rosetta stone, with the developer conf, and the development of Workbench helping to unlock an understanding of what's going on under the hood. That in itself is worthy of celebration, but to also get new agents was an added bonus. I hope you all enjoy a well deserved breather before embarking on the next phase of development. I'm curious to know what you'll come up with!

Hi Matt,

The strummer configuration on the Pico is controlled by breath and not strum keys, so the force at which you blow will be the impulse at which the notes are triggered on the keys you pressed.

Hope this helps,

Geert

Some pretty fancy coding! I would have been satisfied with just Workbench. But on top of that, you've provided some excellent tutorials and documentation which opened my understanding of setups and Belcanto exponentially.

Workbench is really a must have tool to realize the potential of the Eigenharp.

Congrats to all!

Randy

Hi JDune,

Since the testing release 2.0.50, all setups should have been upgraded and be functionally equivalent as in the stable release. There's no real reason to redo them. However, if your setups originated in the experimental releases, then they will not have been upgraded.

Take care,

Geert