written by: ChrisPenner
This is super cool and sounds great! I hope you guys can work out a way to get it integrated into the alpha!
I thought some people might be interested in this. I have been experimenting with combining an apha with a bow sensor device I have been developing -
http://www.zenprobe.com/dylan/project/obow/index.html
I've only recently borrowed the alpha, and I am still having difficulty getting updates to work so I can try various possibilities fully.
Dylan Menzies
Looks very interesting. Have done a bit of "bowing" on cello and violin, I found using the strip controller on the side of the Alpha didn't feel too natural. (had a friend a while back who played cello in a symphony orchestra and He was shopping and trying out various bows many costing over $5000 each!)
Hi Dylan
That looks really interesting. I have a few questions, if you don't mind:
*What speed (bandwidth) is it? I assume that you lowpass filter the signal, what frequency do you do that at?
*I assume that at the moment you are creating MIDI CC data of some kind from the bow speed. Is that the case? are you using oldeworlde current loop MIDI or USB?
*Have you derived the bow pressure/angle as a seperate signal from speed?
* Are you thinking of turning this into a real product? If you are we'd certainly be interested in offering it to our customers, and helping to integrate the sensor into EigenD natively. We've been thinking about bow sensors on and off for years, and this is a really neat solution.
Great to see that you're playing with this - I really like the optical speed sensor idea and it gets around a pile of annoying bow sensor problems in one hit.
and of course, when can we see a video of you playing the Alpha (and which brave souls Alpha is that could I ask?) with it?
John
Hi John
Thanks for your interest -
The raw signal is about 2KHz sample rate with 12 bit resolution, but this contains various kinds of noise. When smoothed you get a very useful signal up to about 500Hz. Some surfaces degrade the signal, and its good to have lots of headroom.
HID is used which then gets converted to internal midi for convenience by a driver. The midi could be picked by pretty much any music software, although its not that elegant sending multiple byte data using controller messages!
Speed and angle are separate yes. Pressure is possible but its not incorporated in the current prototype I'm working on.
I am thinking it would be great to actually make a product out of this. The current stage I'm at is finalizing the hardware and producing something like a first product in a form factor similar to a mic with dimensions about 30mm by 120mm, and also jumping through patent hoops. I would be interested in following any avenues regarding partnerships / licensing etc.
No video yet. At the moment it just sounds like the older video. I'm still getting to grips with the alpha. Things I would like to do are make use of the keys for vibrato and other effects, and hook into the cello synth which I think has a lot of potential. So more videos eventually.
Dylan
Hi Dylan
Thanks for the reply. We won't be looking for licensing arrangements (the legal costs alone of such things, never mind the cost of making a product, CE approval etc would make it non viable for us given the size of the market for it) but if you're going to manufacture something then we'd certainly be very interested to see it work with the Eigenharps well, and if it had a form factor where it can be fitted to the Alpha/Tau in a nice way we'd be very interested in making it available to our customers through our store.
We're just embarking on a move to make EigenD use OSC for networked communications, so that would be logical way to avoid the MIDI mess and would mean a networked application for you if you implemented it in your driver. Its not very hard to do, if you're already generating MIDI.
Please feel free to email me direct if you want to chat about this further.
John
John,
Certainly it will useable with the alpha and tau. It will just need a clip / rubberband to hold it on. I'm using usb so its not going to have the same robustness as the eigenharp cable system.
BTW the alpha I have been using i owned by a research institute called the IOCT at De Montfort University in Leicester.
Heres my email - rdmg dmu ac uk
Dylan
What a creative add-on! I have been a bit disappointed with the ability of the side strip to offer any approximation of a cello bow, and the demo looks to reveal lots of promise. Good luck with your development.
This is super cool and sounds great! I hope you guys can work out a way to get it integrated into the alpha!
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