written by: 0beron
I think the way round you describe it is the way round I meant - so the right hand is playing bass and melody on the lower keygroup, which is split vertically. So I'd play the Alpha in what seems to be the conventional orientation.John,
My handy cello gives me CGDA as the open strings. i would like to program the rows of my Alpha to begin with C, then G, then D, then A and roll down chromatically from there. It'd be nice to be able to do that via a script rather than tread down "unstable lane"... you'd think that I'd be adventurous just getting an Alpha, but software crashes give me stress!
Thanks,
Pat
This is pretty trivial to do, either with a script or the commander. You just need to change the offset between courses on a Keygroup. This offset can be defined in either scale increments or absolute semitones. Unfortunately you do need to use unstable for these new features. If you're worried about running unstable, I suggest that you wait until it moves to be the stable branch, or at least testing, which shouldn't be too long now. Quite a few people seem to be using unstable now in normal use, although we are about to make a couple of largeish architectural changes (in preparation for the new GUI and Windows stuff in the next release cycle) which may introduce new bugs...
Remember, there is nothing stopping you installing both the unstable release and the stable release on the same computer - so you can try the current unstable out without risk.
John
John
This is great but we don't have ,and don't know how to write, the script. I guess it is something you could post on this forum. I also couldn't manage to get to the Script Browser from the Alpha. I found directions only for the Pico in the release notes.
Yorgos
I'll ask Sam to write you a script and let you know how to run it on your Alpha.
John
I am adding a Script Browsing key to the Alpha Setups, along with scripts which change the offset between courses for each keygroup in both semitones and scale steps, for the next unstable release.
If you would like access to the Script browser in the meantime (e.g. to change the key pitch bend range), you can use the Commander as a temporary measure. If you type into the Commander (with the Browser open):
eigenbrowser , interpreter hey script browse
As an old TV star used to say (can't remember which one)... "easy for you, difficult for me". Standing by for the unstable release to be come a somewhat stable release, then a fairly dependable release, then a release...
:-) Cost of innovation!
Pat
"I am adding a Script Browsing key to the Alpha Setups, along with scripts which change the offset between courses for each keygroup in both semitones and scale steps, for the next unstable release.
Sam
Eigenlabs Software Department "
I couldn't find any such script in the 1.1.1-unstable. All the relative scripts were for the Pico. Is there a way to write that kind of a script myself?
"I couldn't find any such script in the 1.1.1-unstable. All the relative scripts were for the Pico. Is there a way to write that kind of a script myself?"
These scripts are still work in progress, but I will aim to include them in the next unstable release - I will also post them on our Documentation Wiki when they are complete. Thanks for your patience.
Sam
Eigenlabs Software Department
John,
Sorry for the late reply... I've been away from the instrument for a bit. As per bbcello's post, above, I'd like to customize each "column/course" of keys to start as with a cello: CGDA (and E would be nice), flowing chromatically down the course. It's not a matter of customizing the scale, but of defining which note lives atop each course.
Thanks,
Pat
Sam
I didn't realize that it is such a complicated thing. When I bought the Alpha I was certain that the most basic setup would be a blank keyboard where we could assign any pitch to any key. I am not speaking about advanced functionality. If you can't have the notes you need (for a given genre) the instrument is just unplayable. It is like having a piano tuned in Pelog pentatonic while you want to play Mozart.
Actually the idea of a setup without any layout or repetitions might be useful to many of us. If for example if the keyboard started at C0 (upper left corner) end ended at C#8 (lower right corner) with C0, A#1, G#3, F#5, and E7 ant the head of each course I could apply any tuning and layout outside EigenD or possibly with Scale Manager. It would only need a bit more work since instead of seven or twelve number strings it should have a 110 number string.
Is this easier to make?
Yorgos
This gets a little more complicated especially on the Alpha I think, since you can define keygroups, and the keygroup can be an arbitrary number of keys... looking forwards to seeing more on this topic
I was talking about what happens within a single keygroup and I brought as an example the largest possible one, 22 rows 110 keys.
Hi Yorgos
The Keygroup, Scaler and general musical tuning arrangements on Eigenharps is not really a matter of inappropriate complexity, they ended up that way because we discovered that we directly needed that flexibility for a number of reasons. Keygroups actually started life four years ago doing exactly what you're asking for, starting at Key 1 and counting up in one long scale, but we quickly found this to be very clumsy in practice as well as not accomodating some key musical ideas like Courses, common to many other instruments (and vital for things like polyphony control in string models for example).
It is actually quite easy to create the setup you and Pat want though, and it can be done in two different ways.
Firstly you could do this by simply (using the big, all key keygroup found in all the Factory setups) setting your tonic to C, scale to chromatic then changing the course offsets to enough scale increments to set the base of each course wherever you want. The only slightly complicated stage here is the last, which you will either need the commander to do, or a script. It's very easy Belcanto though, to change the Course offsets to whatever you want. If I were setting this up, this is the way I would do it.
Secondly you could do exactly as you have suggested and have a Keygroup that just linearly counts up the keys and then use a user defined scale to put whatever mapping you like on those keys. Making Keygroups is quite easy, although plumbing them in can be tedious at the moment. The only slight doubt about this is making a scale 110 notes long - it ought to work but that's never been tried so you may end up discovering new bugs. If you want a setup with a Keygroup like this I'll ask Sam if he can do that sometime next week for you, although I would warn you that this is exactly what we used to do three or four years ago and it turns out to be very unwieldy and clunky in actual use.
Both of these require the use of the 1.1 software which is still unstable (and really is 'unstable' right now- we just made a lot of changes and it means what it says) which means you'll have to wait a few weeks for it to make it into the 'testing' release (hopefully sooner than that) before I'd advise you using it in anger. You could certainly play around with it in the meantime though - it doesn't break your existing stable install when you use it.
John
John
I don't mind using the latest unstable (although it really hates my plugins). At this stage I don't go for convenience. The tuning I am trying to use is not an exercise in flexibility. It is essential to the music I play (turkish classical). I have to use a 35 note octave. Without this tuning, the Eigenharp is useless to me.
I think the idea of a Belcanto command is great especially since the script will take some time to be written. I will be learning Belcanto at some point anyway why not start now? Could you send me this command?
From the looks of the commander it seems that one can either "play" the command on the Eigenharp or type it on the computer keyboard. Is this true?
Yorgos
Hi Yorgos
Sam is going to write up how to change course offsets on the Wiki and then post the link here as soon as he's done. Course offsets can be made in scale increments (ie, as an integer number) or in absolute pitch in semitones (that can be fractional). The scale increment is normally by far the most useful. It'll be interesting to see what you come up with for a 35 note octave. If you've written your own scale file for this, we'd love to have it on the Wiki.
And yes, you can either type Belcanto straight into the commander as text or you can play it in as notes from the instrument (in some setups there is now a special keygroup destination, just like an AU, for this). The former is much easier to start with but the latter (playing the notes) is very neat when you have got the hang of it, and very fast.
It's also easy to write and run your own scripts. There's the beginnings of a section on the Wiki about this here.
John
Aha .. it appears that a good section of the inner workings of Bel Canto (including the often hinted at Course Offsets) are now appearing on the wiki:
http://eigenlabs.com/wiki/The_EigenD_Reference/
Keygroups seem even more comprehensive than I thought, for example I was wondering about splitting keygroups vertically as opposed to horizontally, thinking it might need a software mod once the open sourcing is done, but it appears I can make a keygroup of my own from belcanto, with any shape and size. I suppose it will be a blank keygroup, with no talkers or submodes attached to its mode key, but presumably I can load an instrument into the keygroup with another belcanto command and be ready to play it?
Awesome ... time for some study and experimentation!
Hi
You're right that Keygroups do quite a few things, but all the things they do are related to the ordering and routing of groups of keys only. A Keygroup has a number of output Ports that can be connected to other Agents downstream. You normally switch between these output Ports using the Keygroup Mode Key and outputs can be connected to Rigs (which contain a set of Agents that make up a native instrument) AU/VST hosts or Talker Agents, amongst other things. Keygroups allow you to attach some metadata to the performance information flowing through them, such as course offsets, what course a key is in, scale etc. The downstream Scaler Agent then uses this information to work out what pitch the note should be, and how polyphony should behave. You can override the upstream Keygroup information by setting it in the Scaler directly if you want, so you can make the scale and other tuning information fixed for the sound and not dependent on the Keygroup settings. It's pretty flexible.
You certainly can put this together yourself, although making your own plumbing arrangements is not currently for the faint of heart as we've stopped supporting the old system browser (which never saw public release) in order to concentrate on the Workbench, so there are no current GUI tools to introspect the system in any kind of useful way. Sam and Dave do it all the time, but they have had a lot of practice and have the dev team on hand when they get stuck.
The best way to get started is to tinker with existing Keygroups - you'll find that you can put them into Choose Mode and reorder them quite easily, along with changing Course Offsets. Remember to save the Setup as a different name when you're done. If you have the need for a particular plumbing arrangement, please let us know and we'll do our best to make one for you.
Making your own connections will get a lot easier later this year when we get the Workbench software out - this provides a nice graphical environment for managing the connections between Agents. This will be a while longer though.
John
I was toying with the following idea, to make it possible to play three things at once with practise:
Split the keyboard horizontally like the existing split 4 (two rectangular keygroups, half the keyboard to each.). You can play chords with your left hand on the top keygroup, and then on the bottom keygroup split it _vertically_, and assign the left hand two courses to a bass instrument, and the remaining 3 to a melody instrument, the idea being to play bass with your right thumb and melody with your right fingers.
A way of doing this currently would be to use just one keygroup on the right hand, and use a sufficiently sophisticated AU such as Omnisphere to split the input based on midi note number. This would give a sort of diagonal split with a default keylayout, although you can get a true vertical split by shifting the left hand two courses down a few octaves in bel canto, and compensating for this in the AU plugin by raising the output octave. This only requires course offsets which are possible in the latest release, and documented on the wiki.
Another possibility is to build two keygroups and plumb them in, which sounds tough without the workbench.
The choose mode sounds like it could be used to remap the bass columns to form a circle of fifths to group common intervals together - we're one step closer to the Eigen-Accordion... !
That sounds like it might be fun, if quite hard to play. I always play though with my right hand on the lower half of the instrument (comes from playing the Cello in the past probably) though, so I'd want the first two courses, call it the third Keygroup on the RHS of the lower half, not the LHS, so that mu thumb was correcly positioned. Do you always play with your right hand on the top half? And just out of interest, what other instrument do you play?
I'll chat to Sam about making a setup with this Keygroup layout for you - if its reasonably quick I'll post back here with an ETA.
John
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