Hi this is Ben Rogerson for musicradar.com and I'm here at the launch of Eigenlab's Eigenharp
which is a revolutionary new instrument and I'm here with Mark who's going to tell us all about
it. So Mark, the Eigenharp, how does it work? >>Basically the Eigenharp, you use it with
a laptop to create sounds which are on the laptop and the interesting this is the keys
really which are quite exciting, they move on 3 axis so they're sensitive to pressure,
so the harder you hold it down, the louder it gets, you have pitch up and down so you
can verbrato a single note like you can on a stringed instrument. There's a filter to
bend it the other way, that's set up with a filter and all of this you can set up however
you want for each individual instrument. >>So you say it runs in software, so you've
got 3 elements here, you've got the instrument itself, the controller box on the floor I
can see and the software, all the sounds are generated in actual software is that right?
>>Yeah that's right, all the sounds are stored on the laptop which means that you don't get
the instrument with all the sounds that become dated in 10 or 20 years you can update sounds
all your sounds as you find new sounds or use sounds that you've already got that you
use with keyboards or in music programming software. >>So what about compatibility with existing
standard, can you use plugins, is that workable? >>Yeah you can you can use audio units, we
use them all the time, which is great you just load those in really easily and their
compatible with all the features of the eigenharp as well.
>>I believe there's some kind of step sequence functionality on here as well, could you show
us that? >>That's right yeah, it's called the arranger
and you can map the keys to any instrument you like, at the moment I've got it set up
to drums. You can change the start and end point here by pressing that and you can go
backwards if you want. So basically you just pull down a key and so I've got hi-hats if
I just quickly pull up a percussive loop. Then to turn them off you just press them
again or you can turn the whole thing off with this key here, but that's a really great way
to perform, instead of hitting a button or just playing a backing track people can see
you build an entire loop or melody key at a time.
>>The breath pipe as well, I noticed that, is that to play woodwind instruments and brass
instruments or are there other uses for that as well?
>>Both yeah you can play, we've actually got a physical model of a clarinet which I can
quickly show you, so obviously you blow into the breath pipe to produce the sound or it
can be used to produce filters. So here I've got a sort of wah wah effect by using the
breath pipe. >>What about these buttons down the bottom,
how do they different from the ones at the top?
>>Well they're exactly the same in terms of sensitivity, they're still just as sensitive
with the pressure but they're made to be hit a lot harder, so they're ideal for playing
drum patterns. Then you can map any sound to that so we're thinking as some point we're
probably going to have a guitar sound, acoustic guitar sound, hold down the key and it doesn't produce
sound until you strum percussion key so there are lots of interesting things you can do
with that. >>And I notice there's a mic input down the
bottom as well what's that there for? >>The mic input, that's actually at the top
here, you can attach a microphone so you can sing and loop, loop different vocals back
using a vocoder so that's quite interesting. You've also got a heaphone out on the back
as well so you can listen to what you're playing through your headphones.
>>I notice you've got 2 strip controllers down the side of the instrument what are they
used for? >>They can be configured to do anything you
like with sound, so here for example we have a trip controller connected to pitch so if
I hold down this, so that's how that works. The other one is set up to give me feedback
like you would get on a guitar with an amplifier, then as I move back it'll slowly decrease,
so you could fade out and then fade it back in again if you wanted to.
>>Am I right in thinking as well that the software supports apple loops, you know that
you can trigger those from the buttons as well?
>>Yeah that's right you can trigger drum loops, I've got a couple on here I can quickly show
you, so you can just easily switch between drum loops; speed them up, slow them down
you've got tap tempo function as well so you can easily play with other musicians.
>>Ok, so as well as the main Eigenharp the Alpha we've also got this little fella here
which is the pico which is the more affordable model which is going to be £349 I think, is that right?
>>That's right yeah. >>So can you show us a bit playing on this
one? >>Yeah ok, it has all the same features just
slightly less keys than the alpha, I'll just show you a clarinet quickly, so that's
a physical model of the clarinet. It also comes with one strip controller down here
that again can be set up to do anything you want with it. It comes with the usb cable
so you can plug it straight into your laptop and it's ready to go.
>>And the software is it essentially the same as came with the Alpha?
>>It's exactly the same software, same set up and everything
>>That's how the Eigenharp works then, but what about the inspiration for the instrument?
We spoke to Eigenlabs founder John Lambert. >>It really comes from an experience of mine
in the early 90's when I played in a transambient band gigging around London, we played Bagleese,
Big Chill all these sort of warehouse gigs and it was just a nightmare to set up. We
had a lot of fun we had a lot of anlogue synths on stage, guitars, Atari 1040s, those ancient
computers running C-Lab and as I say the music was great fun but by comparison to the experience of going down
the folk club playing my acoustic guitar the set up and experience of going to the gig
was just horrible and so I thought of this as a way to solve some of those problems to
make playing digital music visually more entertaining on stage so the musician wouldn't look like
they were twiddling knobs and playing with computers they'd look like a guitarist does,
kind of sexy and fun on stage and also the set up time would just be reduced to five
minutes, just like the acoustic guitar. >>You mentioned trance there so is this an
instrument designed primarily for electronica people or does it have a much broader appeal
do you think? >>I think it's got a much broader appeal, it
came, the driver if you like for it's early design came from that, we've had huge interest in it right
across the spectrum from the classical players and film composers all the way through to
goth rock bands and I'm serious about that as well we've got a guitar player from a goth rock
band who really wants one to kind of replace their main instrument because they think it
can take them whole new places. >>Do you think it's an advantage to have some
kind of musical training before you pick up an eigenharp kind or can it be played by anyone
really? >>Well it's certainly pretty easy to pickup,
we've designed it to be rather like the piano or guitar, you can learn 3 chords on it and
get going really fast. It helps of course to be a musician before hand in the same way
that if you want to learn the cello being a pianist helps because you know the theory
and you know the harmony, your fingers move nicely and all that kind of thing but really
you don't need to know any of that and there are some really cool things in the system
that make some really tough things that are normally in music, like learning the scales,
I can't, I don't know how to play the whole tone scale for example on the guitar but I just
press one button on the Eigenharp and I've got it right under my fingers and that's fun.
I've been playing flamenco scales and hungarian gypsy scales, we have 82 scales in the system
so some of things that are really hard about learning musical instruments get
a lot easier. So I don't think it's hard, I think it's a fun instrument for a beginner.
>>Turning to the future where would you see the Eigenharp in the next 2 or 3 years? Do
you think you plan to develop more models or just concentrate on evolving the one you've
already got? >>No, we have a whole load of stuff in development
that I can't really talk about but yes there will be more models and there's some really new, interesting
things coming out in the very near future, we have a CD gate interface coming out in December which
enables people to hook up, to natively hook up their old fashioned analogue synths you
know their moos and stuff to the Bel Canto system. In the new year, in February we're
launching the workbench which is a more advanced piece of software that allows you to do really
advanced stuff with connectivity inside the system to find your own scales for example
in floating point number, so you can do micro tone auto tunes, it's going to be an experimentalist's
paradise the workbench. It also, the workbench interestingly enough we already have and it's
in use internally, our beta test team use it and our inhouse musicians use it, the only
reason we're not releasing with instrument to start with is that we think the training
materials aren't adequate and because it's so powerful it's quite easy to get yourself lost, confused
and angry using it so we're waiting until February when we've got video tutorials and all our
training materials really sorted out before we launch it. But that's an exciting development there and there
will be other instrument models coming along as well through next year.
>>Great thank you very much.