Congratulations to all those who have received or will soon get their preorder - just wanted to say I’m really pleased for you and am delighted that people are experiencing the magic of MPE. I love it, and reading this reminds me of those first buzzes and wow moments when you discover how expressive a synth can be. Enjoy, and maybe one day I’ll join the osmose club…
Yes, they recognise it as an issue they are working on.
Totally understandable, and as we all know, we are happy to be patient with Osmose.
I’m of view that as a mechanical innovation we would be fools to expect that it doesn’t need great user and manufacturer support to make it a lifetime instrument. So hope to see more from Expressive on instrument care, maintenance and calibration.
It might, but some pieces are just the right speed and require refingering in a way that it is almost inevitable. For me it’s that keys riff half way John Miles “Music” that always makes a key clack.
This key clack thing is the one hardware aspect I found perfectible: I understand the need to stay close to the piano form factor, but as you can bend laterally two keys towards each other, I feel like the extremities of the keys could have been made round I stead of rectangular, maybe…
Although with practice I know I have to avoid such key clacking, it’s always inconvenient to hear this.
yeah, the key clash is I guess the thing you first notice…and is a bit disconcerting.
not sure the shape of edges would affect much, as its (for me) not ‘catching’ (which shape would help), rather its just the contact. I think only more spacing would help this.
but definitely found, the more I play, the more infrequently it happens.
perhaps partly because, Ive steadily been increasing the bend sensitivity. so when I bend , its with much less lateral movement.
looking at the sensitivity settings, I think Expressive E were particularly ‘conservative’ with bend settings… in all 3 settings, bend range, curve and stability. (whereas pressure/at are pretty reasonable)
this makes sense, I suspect they didn’t want new players to be a faced with a keyboard that ‘warbled’ uncontrollably (due to limited experience with action), and then have to tell them to ‘back it off a bit’… so went conservative, and assumed once you got used to it, you’d know you can tweak things.
of course, thats not saying, there wont be times with key clash, I think some styles/players this will be inevitable, but hopefully it’ll improve for everyone over time.
certainly this would be an interesting question for some of the players involved in the dev process, as they’ve been playing it for a couple of years now… so do they still encounter it? does it matter?
I love the physical modelling stuff the most, and in fairness, is pretty much why I bought the Osmose.
I just keep coming back to the duocello, even though its so simple…
I think because Im really enjoying the weighted portamento, and practicing it.
I suspect, this is because I feared the slides would be the ‘lacking’ element of the Osmose (compared to continuous surfaces) , and Im just amazed at how well this works with it.
But I keep wandering around, enjoying the various physical presets, things l ike koto are magically dynamic… and even simple things like resonant drum are surprisingly fun.
can’t say, I use the synthy sounds much, though Im sure they will be the highlight/staples for some.
but many are undeniably great, pads are lush, with nice movement - its hard not to love replicants dream, even if just for the name. but there are some pretty nice leads and basses too…
what are your favourites? what genre of sounds are you leaning towards?
Im also wondering a little how this might change… as of today, Im still playing the Osmose alone.
but later today, Im going to start using the Octatrack with it, and layering different sounds from the Osmose… so as I start to create ‘pieces’, perhaps there will be a shift in what I use?
Same here.
I haven’t even had the time to pair it with the OB-6, just for the fun…
My life is a mess, I should save more time/energy for myself I guess.
I posted this to Facebook, but some here may be interested…
honestly this is touching the surface of whats available in the Haken Editor,
but I wanted to highlight its worth loading up, even if you aren’t going to do sound design.
theres quite a few things in there that are not exposed in the Osmose UI.
as you can imagine layering, adds a whole new dimension… as things like pressure/y start interacting with each other… and with a few tweaks to each preset
Ive been playing with combining kenetic soundboard + ambient analog
I’ve been playing it mostly alone too but have added a Blofeld to the equation, which is working beautifully. As I dig in and raise the volume of the Osmose, I’ve got the Blofeld set up to fade out and also move through its wavetables - some of the blends are lovely.
Definitely the physical modelling sounds for me too, strings, plucked things and so on as well as some braying ethic flutey type material so I can get my snake-charming vibrato our of my system. I might try extending the range of pitch bend a little but right now the feel is good and I like how I can slightly bend notes within a chord as I vary the dynamics. Enough for many years of fun there.
Have you done much with the arpeggiator? I’ve sorta given up as the notes seem late compared to other synced-up gear. This is with 5-pin MIDI BTW (when I eventually found the setting) so not sure it’s been tested extensively with that.
I’m more bothered about tight sync than features. Heck, I still use the Jupiter 6 arpeggiator and have no worries about spaces in that. BTW there is a hold function.
It’s one of the first encoders for arp parameters iirc. My arpeggiator needs are usually more about quick access via front panel buttons than menu diving, so I doubt I’ll use it a lot.
nah, I’ll be honest… it doesn’t hold any appeal to me…
as you say, would be worth trying with an internal sound, that’ll help you determine if its midi latency or not.
(also try with usb if possible… MPE is putting out a lot of data, and given its a serial protocol, that might be problematic over din?)
interesting fun fact… the Eagan Matrix engine can do arps too … basically it has a graph (and 2 graph offsets) , which can be used for pretty much anything including notes/modulation…
(details and example in the EM manual)
I’m receiving just MIDI clock at the MIDI input; it is not the issue because the same clock is routed to many other synths, all of which sync fine. No worries, ta, just wondering if anyone was using the arp, it’s not a huge interest but I do like to try everything.
I’ve raised a ticket with a few minor issues already, will wait and see how that goes before sending any more.
