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This thread is for entries to the 2014 Eigen Challenge
for more info/faq see the #EigenChallenge2014 - Discussion thread

Can you released something new every month? Can we as a community reach 50 entries in 2014?

This is a fun oriented challenge, with the emphasis on motivating eigenharpists to produce more music in 2014 using their eigenharps and along the way develop their skills.

Entries should:
- include any Eigenharp in used any way, be creative
- not have been released before.
- have been fun to make :o)
- include: Title, Month of entry, URL, optionally description covering perhaps what you used, how it was made, inspiration

You can submit any time during the month, with as many entries as you wish.
(if you want to update an entry, just edit the existing entry)

That’s it, open to all genres, solo/band/backing mix, covers/own composition, with or without video, it doesn’t matter if your an accomplished musician or a beginner. It’s all about personal development an improving over the year through repetition, so don’t be put off by the fantastic videos on youtube.
If you miss a month or are starting late - thats fine too... its all about taking part.

Winners:
Every participant is a winner, you will get - a warm fuzzy feeling associated with the satisfaction of completing something, development of your skills, and of course support, feedback and suggestions from other eigenharpists.

Sharing: consider sharing on the G+ Eigenharp community
hashtags: on other social media use #EigenChallenge2014 & #Eigenharp

Enjoy, and lets make lots of music

please note : this is a 'community challenge' and not sanctioned or run in any way by eigenlabs.

OK something,..(on a rush)
Double Pico+Pianoteq -Bluntner - Breath pipe Sustain pedal
Left hand tonics and chords / right higher octave simple melody /noodle

I'm deconstructing something here, so this is also a riddle!! to some of you...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6369052/xx%20DO%20NOT%20ERASE%20-%20MOVE%20xx/Deconstruct%2001.wav

edit: straight recording, using "old friend" bc - audio hey recorder set ;-)
#EigenChallenge2014

This is really nice António, congrats!!

A simple offering from a novice for #Eigenchallenge2014 :)

Andante in C by Carulli from my son's classical guitar book. Played on a Pico (so slightly tweaked to avoid using the octave keys). Who wants to play "guess the VST"?

https://soundcloud.com/mijiti/andante-in-c

Totally agree Nik, its all about taking part and making use of these wonderful instruments. The entries have been great and inspiring too.
I hope others also join in the fun.

Ive now put a quick link to entries on second post, so that comments can be made here about entries ... a bit more natural.
if any mistakes or omissions let me know, and i will fix.

Oo, your on a roll :)

Ps Any chance of putting it (and other one) on soundcloud, easier to listen too

its really nice as it is, very clean and simple.

Heres my entry for February 2014 :Guitar and Piano on an Eigenharp
a short composition for the guitar and piano, inspired by the guitar sample, and also the fact I'm learning to play Spanish Romance, so i hope that has influenced it a little.

Played on the Alpha, with PianoTeq playing the chords on the top split, and the Orange Tree Samples Evolution Guitar on the bottom, recorded audio live in Ableton (was tempted to edit the midi to remove the mistakes but resisted :o)), I did a little tweaking of audio in Ableton (pan/reverb and levels), and then put the movie together with iMovie.
Fun... .... on to the next!

Well, I'll enter Biko

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP7mKXQxS9I

Just finished a tour with one of my bands and Biko was a new addition for this tour. This performance was at the Paramount Theater in Long Island, NY, a couple of weeks ago.

In this version, I'm doing pads, power guitar chords and Taurus bass with my right hand and the bagpipe solo in between each verse with my left hand. The pads were created from the Arturia CS-80 and loaded into Kontakt. The power guitar chords are from the Cinematic Guitar and the Taurus Bass is made by the IK Multimedia SampleMoog. The bagpipes use three different sample sets and are slightly detuned from each other (yeah, I know, bagpipes are already out of tune)

The pads, guitar chords and Taurus bass notes are predefined (in Max) and so the Eigenharp keys just trigger them, although the initial fade-in is done by generating a ramp in Max that's attached to the volume level.

The sections of the alpha where the bagpiples are played is tuned like the top 5 strings of a guitar.

There are actually two separate bagpipe sections, the upper section for the main chorus and the lower, quieter and with reverb, intended to sound far away, is used at the end.

Enjoy

It's a well-established fact that every great classical musician secretly yearns to play the accordion.

That's why my contribution to April's #eigenchallenge2014 is an accordion piece. The least interesting thing about it is the tune - "What shall we do with the drunken sailor" is simple even by my standards. What's more interesting is that I've used my newly-acquired Workbench to create a new setup and (also new to me) Omnisphere for the sound. The setup allows the Eigenharp to simulate an accordion, and the tune is really just a simple demonstration of the setup.

https://soundcloud.com/niksilver/what-shall-we-do-with-the-drunken-sailor

The setup creates two keygroups on the Pico. The top hand has one keygroup that plays chords - one key for each chord. Each key press runs through three fingerer agents, one for each note of the chord (root, third and fifth). The bottom hand has the other keygroup which plays the melody notes (the piano keys on an accordion).

The setup requires the player to use the breath pipe to trigger the notes. Blowing and sucking are intended to simulate squeezing and drawing on the accordion's bellows.

I've also used the fingerer agents to enable a pattern I've wanted to use ever since I learnt about the Eigenharp (and the clear limitations of the Pico's keys). In the bottom keygroup by keying both a note and the next one you get a sharp. So keying C+D gives you C#, D+E gives you D#, etc. On the top keygroup the same pattern produces a minor chord. So keying C ordinarily plays C major, but keying C+D generates C minor.

As it happens in this particular tune there are no sharps or flats, but it does use a couple of minor chords.

In Omnisphere I spent some considerable time making the sound suitably interesting and reasonably plausible-sounding. The basic sound is a Melodica. It's modified dynamically depending on whether and how much the player sucks or blows in the breath pipe, so that the "squeezing" sound is slightly different from the "drawing" sound. Of course the volume also varies with the magnitude of the breath input. This is all intended to add that all-important variation and humanity to the sounds which Mike Milton has talked about before.

Given the amount of time I spent getting my head around Workbench, Omnisphere and (most of all) some basic computer music concepts I chose a tune that wouldn't take very long to learn to play - I wanted to make sure I got something out the door by the end of the month.

In the setup I never worked out how to ensure a lower volume on the top keygroup (the chords). I sent the top keygroup's breath data through a ranger agent which scaled down the breath reading, and then wired that into the pressure port of the audio unit agent. However, I couldn't get a quieter sound from Omnisphere, even though the numbers were correctly scaled down. I'm not sure if this is because I'm making a mistake with the setup or am misunderstanding Omnisphere. In the end I resolved it just by reducing the volume directly on the MIDI channels within Omnisphere. I'd like to have controlled that from within the Eigenharp setup.

I continue to fail to understand the Eigenharp's channels within a setup. I had two major problems which were both fixed by specifying channels for wires' destination ports (from the default "No channel set"). I've got a vague understanding that they clarify routing and correlation of data/events, but I still have a sense of voodoo about them. I need to watch the DevCon 2012 "EigenD internals" videos even more.

I'll post the setup if I get time...