there is always an exclusive and prolonged relationship between traditional musicians and their instruments, muscle memory is built through time with new and deeper expressions gradually become possible.
I love tactile interfaces, with modular systems we are able to exploit generated events of modulation extraordinaire, with sequential machines we compose in a nonlinear fashion, while with tactile instruments connections between gestures and sound are explored.
the only thing that comes close right now would be a blippoo box. Which achieved quite some of the “instrumentality” stated above.
would love to see elektron’s take for it. I was a MDuw user 10+ yrs ago and then grew some strong interests in electronic musical interface. you can check out my humble works at : mengqimusic.com
glad to be here, I miss the elektron-user forum today and bumped into this place.
I’ve just started with eurorack (installed my first module yesterday). Late last night, I came across a thread on muffwigglers talking about strange and exotic modules and that led me to Meng Qi and Ciat Lonbarde. Needless to say, I didn’t get enough sleep!
Elektron have made some great leaps forward in terms of human interface in the past. They’ve grown massively over the last few years though, and seem to be aiming to shake off their boutique status by bringing out simpler devices at a lower price point that will appeal to a larger customer base. They may not want to take the risks again they took when bringing out the Monomachine or Octatrack. Or maybe they will?
It’s great to see smaller companies like yours making an impact in the eurorack community. I really like the DIY/Open Source mentality that I see everywhere.
Anyway, good to see you popping your head in to elektronauts!
I know its not what you were talking about, but you made me imagine someone so in tune with their modular that they’re constantly tweaking and manipulating and “playing it”. As in not a moment goes by where there not patching something with one hand and twiddling something with the other. Anybody know of examples of this? I don’t know much about modular artists myself, most of what I’ve seen they slowly let patches evolve while running other gear and tweaking the modular occasionally. I am aware of some old electronic journey music that was all modular, but still not like a guy with hands and mind glued to modular tweaking every moment…
@rikrak
Very well stated, it was innovative when SID / MD / MM / OT came out, and almost it came to a state that the sound of MD / MM were accepted because of the love for those machines. I am hardly a company, just one guy having fun with machines and sound. Thank you very much for the love, reminds me of the warmth during the eletron-users era.
@Open_Mike
With complex systems like a modular, it’s impossible to tell the amount musicianship from physical movements of players. As patching and programming is as important as virtuosoship, if not more than. We can tell if one plays a keyboard / a continuum / a blippoo box better than another from their movements, but not the same with a modular system.
There’s a lot of freedom when an electronic musical device is designed, thanks to the technology. And one debate is how much freedom / functions would be given to the players. As more of it would normally open up new territories for expression, but at the same time, requires more musicianship and time spent to understand the device - It’s much harder to approach a violin than a piano. and even worse (better?) that if the freedom is in the form of a gestural playing interface (like all acoustic instruments), practice and dedication from players are required, releasing such an instrument needs courage for a big company. Finger crossed for elektron, want to see it moving out its comfort zone again.
continuum / soundplane / linnstrument / seaboard
these are basically in the same family - very fine 3D sensing
i own a continuum and it’s awesome, it captures all movements on the foam.
but getting values from gestures, then mapping them to sound synthesis is a decoupled process.
it’s roughly the same as building a robot that plays a guitar, and use a 3D surface to play the robot.
The touche has caught my eye recently. 4 parameter control, midi and CV, very responsive, like a modwheel on steroids. The midi in merges to the out so you can combine it with existing midi keys. Check out the demo vids, it’s shipping just now. https://www.expressivee.com/
Also the leap motion, wireless gesture controller, is extremely cool. There’s a guy called anton maskeliade who uses it extensively while playing live. Saw a vid of another guy essentially air-drumming an entire tune with it, including launching clips and controlling fx. https://www.leapmotion.com/