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Hi everyone,

I've been talking about this for quite a while now and actually created a Hang Drum setup for the Eigenharp in Belcanto right before I joined Eigenlabs more than a year ago. Several people have asked about it, but I never actually sat down and made it available.

Last night my soul needed some Hang Drum 'zen goodness' and recorded this improvisation video of me playing it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmPgPSOQFD4

If you would like to set this up yourself, here is the Belcanto script and associated instructions:
http://www.eigenzone.org/2011/12/08/my-eigenharp-alpha-hang-drum-setup-script/

Note that this is really fine-tuned for SonicCouture's Pan Drums Kontakt instrument, though it could be useful for other percussion instruments.

The main idea is to not play with notes but with areas on the Alpha's playing surface by using several grouped keys for different articulations of the same note. I arranged the two different sampled Hang Drums on the playing surface of the Eigenharp Alpha so that one is on top and the other at the bottom. The notes of the Hang Drums are structured in colored ‘zones’ of five keys which correspond to the different articulations for the same note. This means that I can just hit the area without thinking about musical notes and get into a percussion mindset. The arrangement is very similar to what would happen if you cut a real Hang Drum in two and bend each half until it’s straight, with the Ding and Gu stuck at the top end.

It works very well and feels extremely nice with the super sensitive keys of the Eigenharp. The colored lights are also naturally soothing and it’s truly a relaxing experience to play.

Hope this is useful for someone.

Take care,

Geert

Yes, I was wondering how to spend money other than on xmas - and here you supply the answer!

;-p

@mike send them an email, they're good people, they might give you another cheaper one of your choice

Thanks for sharing, looking forward to try this. The scripts are also quite educational!

@mike I'm sorry but yes, these have been saved with Kontakt 5 and I can't seem to convert them back to Kontakt 4. I didn't do anything major to the instruments though, just adapted the velocity a little bit.

Hi all,
I'm trying to build the hang drum setup that Geert posted into a setup based on factory 2 with Workbench. First off, it's given me respect for Geert in building the factory setups. It must have been quite a task!

Anyway, I've not managed to get this working. If I described the steps I've taken perhaps someone could point out what I've missed? I'll put the setup up somewhere once I get it working.

1. Create a new output on main key group. Specify the mode keys for this. I can select the new output ok.
2. Create two new key groups, rename and wire the new output from main keygroup to these. Wire the light connection back to the main keygroup.
3. In each of these keygroups set the musical map by picking the keys in each of the 5 courses for each keygroup, and the course offset to [0,5,5,5,5] .
4. Create two new rigs, for the two audio groups.
5. Open the first new rig, and create and name the inputs (left audio, right audio and lights), and outputs (as per the original script).
6. Create a recorded, scaler, audio unit and summer.
7. Wire the controller input from the gateway to the recorder and from there to the scaler.
8. Wire the frequency output from the scaler to the audio unit.
9. Set the channel count to 8 on the audio unit, and wire the first two through to the summer inputs, and from there back to the left and right inputs on the gateway.
10. Wire the scaler light output back to the gateway light input. At this point I can see that the lights are at least showing!
11. Wire the audio from the rig gateway through to a new channel on the mixer.
12. If I set the AU, load the instrument, set the tail time to 0, and play a note virtual keyboard in the AU I can hear sound, so at least the downwind wiring is ok.

However, no sounds when I press the keys. If I set the tail time back to 10.0 the AU remains idle. I'm sure this tells me that _something_ upwind of the rig isn't wired, but what??

Any suggestions?

Well I thought I'd add to the setup and also learn along the way. But it's a good suggestion, and when I wire the new keygroup to audio unit 1 I get sound when I press the keys. From which I draw the conclusion that the wiring up to my new keygroup is ok, and that the issue has to be downstream of the key group, and upstream of the new audio unit.
Similarly if I connect the key group 1 audio unit 1 output to the new audio unit 5 rig, I get no sound. Which makes me suspect the rig gateway is the problem.

More digging!

Just a quick note to say that I've added belcanto and a config to TheTechnoBear's Creator repository that builds a simple hang drum setup (ie. just the pair of hang drums). It should be easy to add this into your own setups!

Hi Geert, Nope, I'm camera shy ;-) An aside from that I've been spending more time with my modular in the last month or two. I'd like to start to try to combine the two, and process some of the output from EigenD through the modular. I may try to record that if it works out/I can find time.