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Using the Eigenharp Alpha to play the Lament from Riverdance.

September 19th, 2010 Comments off

I recently started learning to play the Eigenharp Alpha. It’s an amazingly expressive electronic controller. The keys are sensitive, apparently to within one micron, in all three directions (in-out, up-down, left-right) and it also has ribbon controllers and a breath controller. Unfortunately, the accompanying software for the Eigenharp is very awkward to use and not well documented. The good news is that it’s not too hard to just get MIDI out of it and so external software can be used to do the processing.

Here’s a video of me playing the Lament (from Riverdance) using Max/MSP to produce background chords (triggered by my right hand) and then both chords and the solo (played with my left hand) are being handled by Apple MainStage. The string and choir sounds are being produced by Omnisphere and the Uillean Pipes solo sound is coming from Kontakt 4.

Of course, I scanned the sheet music into my Macintosh with Scorecerer and published it to my iPad. Unfortunately, I still haven’t found a decent stand for the iPad and although I suppose I could just use a regular music stand, I just balanced the iPad on my leg! I suppose you could argue that that’s another advantage of using the iPad instead of paper, which would just flop around.

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