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!

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

Rich

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.

Just a note to let you know I fixed a few things with the contact form, have tested it in FireFox and it should be working now!

Regards.

I’m not sure I’ve received your message, but I do remember going to your site at one point so I’m not sure if that was related. I am noticing some problems with the Contact form with Firefox browsers, it does work fine on ie7, opera and safari… I will check into this more.

Your site at first glance looks more like a business site, while I don’t have any problems with business type sites becoming a ME BLOGGER site, we are looking for experts that are going to continually add to the conversations about music, education, and/or technology.

Please check the other simple requirements at http://www.mustech.net/100-me-bloggers and look at some of the other ME Blogger sites and determine if you are still wanting to become a ME Blogger.

I will be working on the Contact page for FireFox users…

Best regards.