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Hi

This is a great idea, although the implementation that we have in mind is different in principle. There's a feature development ticket already written for a 'Sequencer' agent that is a mix between the current arranger (which uses talkers for each column and as a consequence is limited in what a note can actually be to a value and velocity, not very Eigenharp really) and our recorders. Simply put this will allow a tonic and scale to be defined in the cross axis over the courses, and each key will record the entire keypress data stream, so that notes can be fully expressive. this will allow all sorts of fun, musical sequencing, particularly if one were to define an associated Arranger that changed the scale the sequencer were playing (which could be defined to allow interesting arpeggiation and improvisiing in a more 'meta' way for example).

Speaking personally, I would like this feature very much as I've spent many many happy hours noodling around with arpeggiators, but I don't think we're going to get it before the summer as we have our hands very full at the moment with the Windows port and the new GUI's, Workbench and Stage. We'll start on it as soon as we can....

And the 'chord generator' idea is one thats been kicked around a lot here. This is a fascinating musical area, and one we haven't yet defined a good feature set for. One of my first forays into this world was creating such a thing with Brian Gaylor back in 1988. It used MIDI and a ittle 8 bit micro to do the work, and we built it for Cameron McVey who co wrote with Neneh Cherrry's partly using it I believe. It was a dinky little songwriting tool, and great fun to play with - battery powered it made its own noise so you could sit in the park and noodle about. We only ever made one, just for him, so it has to be one of the most exclusive bits of musical hardware ever. Jim Chapman, now Eigenlabs Technical Director, wrote the software in 6502 assembler which is not for the faint of heart.

It's one of those problems thats a bit more difficult than it looks at first glance, particularly when you think of how much richer a note is in Eigenharp land. Very interesting to think about though.


John

Please keep the feature requests coming! They really help us to know what you want, and often show a different point of view on a problem that we have grappled with in the past - this can be very very handy. We have spent a lot of time dreaming up things we want to do with EigenD but that is by no means any guarantee that we've not missed a really good idea, or that we have attached the right level of importance to it or found the right way to solve the problem. And several of our current developments started from chance comments by players - it's always great to hear your ideas - please don't be put off if we're there already in some way - we've had nine years now to think about this stuff. That can be a good thing, but can also blind us to important issues as well...


John