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Home » Music Technology

Continuum Midi Controller…Changing The Way We Think About Keyboard Controllers

Submitted by J. Pisano on April 29, 2008 – 8:25 amView Comments    



I’ve been aware of the Continuum Keyboard by Haken Audio for some time now.   I have never had my “hands” on one yet, but I intend to buy one for the next school year and utilize it in a number of classes and ensembles.  

If you haven’t seen the continuum you are in for a shock…  It is a fully functioning MIDI keyboard that works in 3 dimensions, unlike a piano or standard keyboard midi controller.   It’s Z direction typically works like a piano and gives you velocity sensitive amplitude changes.  It’s X position is usually matched to pitch (think going up and down keys on the piano)….However, it’s Y Direction (Imagine sliding your finger all the way up and down the ivory of the keyboard, top to bottom) is where the big midi controller change comes into play.  Using the Y direction you can literally change timbre parameters… imagine making a trumpet flutter tongue or a saxophone growl while you are playing from a keyboard controller…  You can do this with the continuum and much more!  Here are some of the highlights from the Haken site about this “Y Direction” function.

  • The front to back Y position can provide an important expressive tool for the performer when it is used to control appropriate timbre parameters.
  • A cello sample patch, where low Y values favor a soft bowed loop and high Y values favor an aggressive bowed loop. Playing with the accompaniment left hand chords close to the front and a solo right hand lead close to the back would create a dynamic and variable presence to the solo melody line.
  • A wavetable synthesis patch, with the wave table read location changing depending on Y position. This technique is part of the Multicycle piece in the Examples section (of their site).
  • As a panning location, with front playing mapped to the left output and back playing mapped to the right.
  • A gated octave switch, with sound jumping up an octave if the finger position is closer to the front than the back. This will allow for larger intervallic playing with one hand. This technique is part of the Tine Freshet piece in the Examples section.
  • As a balance between muted and unmuted trombone timbres, as demonstrated in this trombone piece from the Examples section (on their site).  

 

You can find a whole host of information about the continuum from their site.  Have any of you had a chance to work with this instrument?  If so, how are you using it and how is it changing the way you control your MIDI samples, etc.  What do you think of this new instrument?

         Dr. Joseph M. Pisano

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  • I think we refitted our whole electronic studio for the price of two of these, so I doubt we'll be trying them out any time soon!

    Ribbon controllers have been around for years (and have for me personally at least always been prohibitively expensive). They do have wonderful expressive capabilities, given the right back end programming, but it has to be learned (and programmed). Is that the purpose of wanting to use them in an educational setting?

    With all due respect, I think giving an exprensive (yes, I just made that word up - expensive/expressive) instrument like the continuum to a student who has no musical ability is comparable to giving your son a Ferrari to learn to drive in. Expressiveness is its strength. It should be used by someone who knows how to perform expressively.

    I would think there are better (and possibly less frustrating) ways to invest this kind of money in giving students that have no musical ability, the opportunity to be creative. The Korg Kaoss is one such thing. Sonalog motion capture MIDI controller is another (though this would require the same kind of programming as the Continuum). Investigate some of the WII midi control options.

    ...or you could just give them a drum kit. Ba-dum-ching!
  • This is an excellent tool for new creativity in music, to be sure. Anything that can allow those that feel “unmusical” to create interesting new sounds and pieces is a good thing---I’ve seen far too many students balk at the keyboard or other traditional instruments, since they “don’t know what to do”, and generally with good reason: most instruments are at least moderately challenging to get started on (keyboards), and many are downright difficult (violin or French horn, among others). Electronics, combined with intuitive layouts and well-programmed interfaces or hardware, can go a very long ways indeed towards enticing new players, and towards giving experienced players new ideas and possibilities. However, it goes a *lot* further than this.

    Consider for a moment what this or any other hardware controller is doing: nothing more than sending streams of data into some kind of device or computer which understands those numbers, then creates sound based upon the current settings. While this is ideal for music creation (since this is as much a gestural and kinesthetic activity as anything else), it could be used for *anything* a computer can do. For example, creating and altering imagery is virtually identical to creating sounds (according to a computer), so this could be used as a video creator / controller, as a painting program, for 3D modeling, etc. It could be used to maneuver in virtual worlds, even change the appearance of the environment. It could enter text via the keys, with the z-axis changing the size and the y-axis changing the color. It could control the movements of a small army of robots! Anything which understands triggers (as the keys transmit) and continuous data (as the y-axis transmits) can utilize the information coming out of this or a variety of other hardware controllers. All that is needed is an interface and an idea.

    MIDI got the jump on controllers such as this, but it is a subset of what these can be used for. Devices like this, though still expensive, are rapidly dropping in price, and the interfaces and software which support them are becoming more and more powerful. I own a 5-octave velocity-sensitive keyboard controller with 9 sliders, 12 knobs, 10 buttons, and programmable presets, which cost me $120. Combine this with the right software and you have nearly a hundred controls at your fingertips---triggers (keys and buttons) and continuous controls (knobs and sliders). There’s no reason these should only control the creation of sound, when anything a computer can do can be interfaced with it.

    How is this achieved? There are a ton of ways, but if you are at all interested in exploring digital media creation and experimentation, download the fully-functional trial of Max/MSP/Jitter from the website below. If you like to tinker, but hate the thought of programming (or not!), this program will blow you away. I’ve used it for three years and can honestly say it’s the most flexible and powerful software I’ve ever seen. Essentially, you “patch together” your interface in any way you want, with hundreds of pre-made objects that do the computing for you…as well as several dozen interface objects to control your data and media. So it’s a graphical programming environment, where the interface is the “code”…no text-based coding required.

    It’s possible to create a two-channel video mixer with crossfade and effects, an audio file playback interface with speed, pitch, filter, delay, and other controls, a synthesizer with similar effects, plus a slew of other goodies like 3D visualizations and MIDI sequencing, in a couple hours (provided you have gotten comfortable with the program). It quite literally can create just about anything; the limitations are almost never technical; generally, only processor power and interface design (like screen space and usability) become issues. To bring it all back around, *any* control in such an interface can be mapped to the Continuum or a similar device easily.

    Get the demo, check out some tutorials, and experiment for awhile. If you like to tinker and want to create some truly different, amazing, even bizarre media, this program is like a candy shop!

    http://www.cycling74.com
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  • Barbara,

    You're right about "piano hero" I think it will be created sometime soon... There will be about 10 BIG FAT Colored keys and you go along pressing them as they light up... (It's not like we don't already have keyboards that light up though... check the infomercial sales channels at night... "Learn how to play piano in 30 seconds...etc.".... ha ha...

    The Haken is pretty expensive to be sure, but the midi controlling properties are indeed fascinating. By using something like this you now have the ability to further control accent/articulation infletions of any sampled/created sound. This is something that is designed to give keyboardists more control over their instrumental sounds... I would not be surprised if this type of "sensing" technology, or some derivitive, appears on standard piano keyboards in the near future.

    The demo, I put up here via YouTube isn't all that great, but it's the only one I could find that demonstrates it.

    Best regards.
  • I can't help but think about the "Piano Hero" possibilities if they can get the surface to light up AND look like a real piano keyboard. Not to mention cost...
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