Noticing the category for self-introduction. Might help provide a bit more context to my query. (After joining the group, noticed that Mark Harris was also telling me about it.)

Longterm sax player and ethnomusicologist. Owner of a Yamaha WX11 since the mid-1990s.

Born and raised in Montreal but lived in different places, from Lausanne, Switzerland, and Bamako, Mali, to Bloomington, Indiana, Mtoncton, New Brunswick, and Austin, Texas. Bilingual ethnographer, now living in Ottawa, Ontario.

Was introduced to electronic music in 1989 at my music school’s “MIDI Studio” where we used an experimentation method based on Brazil’s Samba schools to explore things like Ensoniq EPS, MOTU Performer (before DP), Yamaha DX7, E-mu Proteus, etc. Through friends, kept in touch with this scene for a few years. Eventually played with things like IRCAM’s Max (before MSP), Laurie Spiegel’s Music Mouse, Digidesign Turbosynth, Passport Alchemy (not Camel Audio’s), and Joel Chadabe’s M (before Zicarelli). Was never into DAWs or even hardware synths. Did get a Yamaha TX81Z and a Korg Poly-800, but never did anything much with them.

Was never much of a hardware person, more software-oriented. Did learn some C and a bit of C++ but never became a real coder. Been hacking pieces of code together to make them work, usually ending up with something functional but rather unstable and probably inefficient.

My WX11 wind controller collected a lot of dust, over the years. Would occasionally try to pick it up but wasn’t finding anything to make it “sing”. Didn’t have enough money for a Yamaha VL70m, which would have been the obvious choice. And had a bit of trouble appropriating the instrument in part because it would interpret minute differences in the timing of lifted keys as separate notes. Especially discouraging with the kind of sound based on a strict ADSR envelope and without any kind of legato mode.

About two years ago, discovered the Raspberry Pi computer through my colleague who then went on to found Club Framboise, a group dedicated to Maker Culture and DIY projects, focused on the Raspberry Pi. Started thinking about a variety of music projects. Especially through Sonic Pi, which became my “Golden Hammer” (the Law of the Instrument says: “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”). The current development versions allow for full MIDI and OSC I/O, which makes for remarkable things. Been using this to create a variety of simple harmonic effects including rotating chords (the “Michael Brecker Effect” based on Robby Kilgore’s work with the great wind controller player) and countermotion.

Sonic Pi led me to learn some of the other languages: SuperCollider, ChucK, Pure Data, and Processing. Had thought about all of these, before, but they only made sense after appropriating Sonic Pi. My skills in any of these are severely limited but my Pure Data projects got a boost through Automatonism, which reproduces the Modular Synth model in a set of objects for Pd patches.

When Apple’s App Store came out, started having quite a bit of fun with musicking apps: software which encourages diverse types of participation in music, often in very informal ways. ThumbJam has been among my favourites, over the years, in part because it allows for more expressiveness than most. Its support for diverse scales is also a major benefit for me as an ethnomusicologist. Not to mention that the continuous/discontinuous mode of playing makes for very pleasurable noodling.

Got into an increasing number of iOS apps, including a number of softsynths. Eventually found a way to make them respond well to the WX11. In fact, was able to finally use my wind controller in jam sessions, during the past few weeks, over 20 years after purchasing it.

The key discovery, to me, which has been obvious to a lot of people for a long time, is that a nice effect can be achieved by using breath control to modulate the cutoff frequency of a low-pass filter. On its own, this simplistic technique does a lot to add expressiveness to any sound. From that technique, many other things can be done, such as using lip pressure to add distortion or combining the filter sweep with some other effect. But the filter cutoff trick really opened the door, for me. And there are some free patches implementing the technique in iOS softsynths like Yonac Magellan and Propellerhead Thor.

On top of that, you get amazing synths like Moog Audio Animoog (huge shoutout to Geert Bevin), which bring expressiveness to the next level.

Which got me into MPE. Been daydreaming about those devices, including Roger Linn’s LinnStrument and ROLI’s Seaboard series. Had heard of Eigenlabs but only encountered the Alpha which was too large and, obviously, too expensive for me. It remained at the back of my mind, but kept forgetting that it was basically the only MPE device with breath control.

Kept dreaming about my ideal digital wind instrument. Never tried an Akai EWI and didn’t get a chance to spend time with the Roland AE-10, but they never sounded like they could really fulfill my needs. For one thing, they’re all monophonic, which makes sense to me as a sax player, but limits the possibilities. And they don’t really support alternate scales on their own. And my learning about ribbon controllers, Ondes Martenot, Theremin, and Trautonium paired with my ThumbJam experience conviced me that there was good potential in adding continuous pitch control to the normal key/pad approach.

When ROLI announced the Seaboard Block, a few days ago, my interest for MPE instruments went into overdrive. And finally discovered the Eigenharp Pico which sounds like my optimal “gear”, as you may guess from the rest of this long intro.

Problem is, being tethered to a macOS/Windows computer was kind of a dealbreaker, for me. Part of my use for the device is not only in live situations but in settings where there’s very little space to setup or move around. Carrying my Lenovo laptop to a café for a jam is conceivable (and it’s certainly easier than my TX81Z), but the whole setup feels wrong.

The Raspberry Pi, however, is my learning platform. Even if the RasPi part of my setup is just running mec-app to send MIDI or OSC messages to an iPad, it’s still part of my training. And if it’s eventually possible to connect mec-app directly to Sonic Pi running on the same Pi or a separate one, it makes for exactly the right setup for workshops and such.

As you might imagine, not really trying to find excuses to buy an Eigenharp Pico. It’s just that it could be a new chapter in a story which was becoming something of an obsession.

Surely, you all get that, no?

Apologies for length!

—

Alex