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Ugh, you sell your Alpha - this would presumably be the only one sold second hand, people usually don't give their's away once they can get hold of one...

Am personally not "outgrown" my Tau yet by far, otherwise this would have been very tempting...

Are you really sure you want to sell this? Still hope that the Eigenharp idea will take off once the remaining "missing links" in the software are implemented and the first good players think it's time to show what they practised for. Then this will be one of the first Alphas ever built.

And if not (what we all don't hope) then it nonetheless would become a very rare and sought after musical instrument - building something like that as DIY is presumably not feasable for almost anybody and you rarely get such a powerful software complete with source code with it...

If you practise enough then playing this instrument is addictive!
Tip: If you don't get to grip with the standard layout perhaps try to play with a horizontal chromatic layout
...
c2 |c#2|d2 | d#2|e2
g#1|a1 |a#1|b1|c2
e1 |f1 |f#1|g1 |g#1
c1 |c#1|d1 |d#1|e1

8 octaves on the Alpha, isomorphic layout, best played with both hands, instrument vertical (with cello spike), leaning the instrument on your shoulder or holding it with the thumbs, both hands showing upwards for melodies and sideways for chords/runs (which are much easier with this layout). After many experiments imho this is the most fun way to play the instrument. (I do not have the 5th row on the Tau, this can be useful on the Alpha to play certain chords more easily by doubling the notes on the first "string").

A very rewarding sound: Build yourself something with a pronounced attack phase (so you can play "pizzicato") and infinite sustain that does vibrato horizontally (less than a half tone in each direction), vertical tremolo (going from silence in the down position to loud in the up position) and a slight overdrive on keypress. You need a multitimbral synthesizer for that or a subhost and various instances and set the Alpha to polyphonic mode (I use Bidule and 16x ACE with a variation of the "UH Softmachinoodle 2" preset)

Greetings,
NothanUmber

NothanUmber,

Firstly, thanks very much for the reply - I do understand exactly what you're saying. Believe me, the problem is not with the instrument itself, it truly is fantastic and a joy to play, nor with the software! I will probably (almost certainly) never play it live (and that's certainly something the instrument is crying out for).

I spent a month or so just playing it on my Hackintosh whenever I could - got most of the first few minutes of Tubular Bells pretty much nailed, with overdubbing etc, plus a few of my own things done, so I do know how amazing it can be to play etc.


Stéphane,

Yeah I am, well that's the plan anyway!


All the best,
Tene

+1 one for me on that ... very sad to hear that you're selling it

Tene, you recently mentioned you were selling once again. What is your price?

mike(at)parquin.ca

Hi Pat,

sure, here a script that reconfigures some of the scale talkers in a way that you can experiment with alternative layouts - among them the horizontal which is still my favourite for the Tau because of range and regularity (e.g. easy to play inversions and block runs etc.).

You'll have to adapt it a little bit for the Alpha: The fifth course has to be added, the key numbers for the scale talker to be adapted and the number-rows in the layouts have to be extended to 24 keys per course.

Greetings,
NothanUmber

description
use scale control keys 5-8 in kgroup 1 to chose 3 different kinds of chromatic key layouts (for Tau):

5: GBevin: 4x4 blocks
6: ZaPPZion: 3x4 blocks
7: horizontal
8: Wicki

script
empty join
scale talker 1 listen
kgroup 1 listen
interpreter listen

all phrase cancel

scale to major when 9 set
" scale talker 1 hey 9 to 1 from 2 colour ify " when 9 called 100 do
course 2 offset to 4 interval when 9 set
course 3 offset to 4 interval when 9 set
course 4 offset to 4 interval when 9 set

scale to harmonic minor when 1 0 set
" scale talker 1 hey 1 0 to 1 from 2 colour ify " when 1 0 called 100 do
course 2 offset to 4 interval when 1 0 set
course 3 offset to 4 interval when 1 0 set
course 4 offset to 4 interval when 1 0 set

#scale to melodic minor when 1 1 set
#" scale talker 1 hey 1 1 to 1 from 2 colour ify" when 1 1 called 100 do
#course 2 offset to 4 interval when 1 1 set
#course 3 offset to 4 interval when 1 1 set
#course 4 offset to 4 interval when 1 1 set

scale to chromatic when 1 2 set
" scale talker 1 hey 1 2 to 1 from 2 colour ify " when 1 2 called 100 do
course 2 offset to 4 interval when 1 2 set
course 3 offset to 4 interval when 1 2 set
course 4 offset to 4 interval when 1 2 set

#GBevin chromatic
scale to user 2 when 1 3 set
" scale talker 1 hey 1 3 to 1 from 2 colour ify " when 1 3 called 100 do
course 2 offset to 4 semitone when 1 3 set
course 3 offset to 4 semitone when 1 3 set
course 4 offset to 4 semitone when 1 3 set

#ZaPPZion chromatic
scale to user 3 when 1 4 set
" scale talker 1 hey 1 4 to 1 from 2 colour ify " when 1 4 called 100 do
course 2 offset to 3 semitone when 1 4 set
course 3 offset to 3 semitone when 1 4 set
course 4 offset to 3 semitone when 1 4 set

#horizontal chromatic
scale to user 4 when 1 5 set
" scale talker 1 hey 1 5 to 1 from 2 colour ify " when 1 5 called 100 do
course 2 offset to 1 semitone when 1 5 set
course 3 offset to 1 semitone when 1 5 set
course 4 offset to 1 semitone when 1 5 set

#Wicki chromatic
scale to whole tone when 16 set
" scale talker 1 hey 1 6 to 1 from 2 colour ify " when 1 6 called 100 do
course 2 offset to 5 semitone when 16 set
course 3 offset to 5 semitone when 16 set
course 4 offset to 5 semitone when 16 set

#Wicki chromatic 2
scale to whole tone when 11 set
" scale talker 1 hey 1 6 to 1 from 2 colour ify " when 1 1 called 100 do
course 2 offset to 7 semitone when 11 set
course 3 offset to 7 semitone when 11 set
course 4 offset to 7 semitone when 11 set

empty join

P.S.: Additionally it makes sense to reconfigure the transpose keys to a minor second, so you can "move the window" of imaginable vertical major 3rd strings:


description
Remap octave talkers. Makes the octave up and
down buttons transpose by a Minor 2nd (one
semitone) instead.

This script should be run with Tau setups only

script
empty join kgroup 1 listen octave talker 1 listen
all phrase cancel
octave by 0.083333333333333329 when 72 up
octave by 0.083333333333333329 when 52 down


Additionally you have to put these user scales into your UserScales.txt as the first three entries:
[ZaPPZion chromatic]
intervals= 0 1 2 12

[horizontal chromatic]
intervals= 72 68 64 60 56 52 48 44 40 36 32 28 24 20 16 12 8 4 0

[GBevin chromatic]
intervals= 0 1 2 3 16 17 18 19 32 33 34 35 48 49 50 51 64 65 66 67

(make sure that "user 2, 3" etc. in the script above matches the user slots in which these custom scales are loaded in your setup and adjust the "user x" part in the script accordingly)

one thing I caught before my brain exploded... remapping the octave keys to transpose by one semitone. Could this be the "one key sharp/flat" answer that was discussed long ago? It'd be great to be in a non-chromatic scale, but be able to execute a sharp/flat with the other hand. Can this be done on the alpha?

er um.. sorry to highjack the Alpha for Sale string. I can move this discussion if desired.

Thanks again,
Pat

The current solution permanently transposes when a transpose key is pressed by one semitone per keypress.
A temporary solution should also already be possible - pressing transposes, releasing transposes back. Would have to experiment with that though, am not at home and thus have no Eigenharp available.
As far as I read the new "fingerer agent" in EigenD 2 will provide a more generic solution for tasks like this.

Greetings,
NothanUmber

Hi all - not worried about the hijack except that people might not be able to find the useful information you've added since :) So probably copying it to a new thread would be good or some Wiki articles.

is the alpha still for sale?

Sold.
Sad.

Thanks Everybody.