Hi!
I'm Paul. I've been a keyboard player for around 40 years, and play a bunch of other instruments as well (not guitars though). That said, I've been increasingly tired of hauling keyboards around and had been working on downsizing over the past couple of years. Back in the fall I saw the Eigenharp appear on BBC and some tech sites, thought "hmm interesting" and kind of kept it in the back of my head. I saw one in a window on Denmark St in London over the spring and after a kickass demo by Dave and a 2 hour discussion on what was possible with it, I decided I wanted an Alpha. As ordered, it is ebony, silver metalwork, and ebony keys.
I got my Alpha a month ago and have been busy lurking here reading things and getting my head around it since. I reckon after a month it's time to at least say hi.
I'm really happy with the instrument. As a playing and performance platform I think it is innovative. I have already performed live on an internet radio station with it, and will be doing a live performance in Mid-September with it in upstate NY (so I get to see how well that case holds up to Virgin Atlantic's baggage handlers).
I have been patiently working through the idiosyncracies of the software and my AUs. About 2 weeks ago I realised that there wasn't actually a big tradeoff in reliability between 1.0 stable and 1.1-11 testing (actually 1.1 turned out to work a lot better). I upgraded my laptop's memory in the first week, which made a difference, although I have never had to reboot a mac so much as I have with EigenD (and I've been using Macs for like 25 years).
Anyway, I'm still very happy indeed with my choice, and if I can say that after a month of working with the instrument, then the experience has been positive overall. This forum and the Wikis are quite helpful.
I would say I am now an advanced beginner. I know my way around the various controls in the quick reference, I can play with both hands, I sound like some kind of savant on the 'cello. And I'm slowly deviating from factory setups to my own setups having less factory, more me.
I cannot get pedals to work and I can't get Belcanto up. Neither are show stoppers yet as there's enough to learn otherwise, including accurate technique and appropriate timbre selections.
Anyway, hi everybody. So far so good.
-Paul
UK
