“Wish You Were Here” Cover On The Eigenharp Alpha

Here’s an Eigenharp Alpha cover of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here.

This was sent in on the Submit A Story page by Geert Bevin, who adds:

A few weeks ago Greg from Orange Tree Samples was so kind to send me a pre-release of his upcoming Evolution Acoustic Guitar – Steel Strings (EAG) product.

I set it up so that the first six percussion keys of the Alpha correspond to the strings of an actual guitar for which I play the chords on the upper split of the keyboard with the EAG strum instrument. The lower split of the main keyboard also uses EAG but with the lead instrument to play the melody line. I also use a foot pedal to sustain notes and chords when needed.

I’m really amazed by how natural the combination of the Eigenharp Alpha together with Evolution Acoustic Guitar feels. You can strum, pick, release chords to play muted strums, do hammer-ons and pull-offs, … etc.

I’ll be looking at an even tighter integration to correctly play up and down stroke samples based on the direction by which you’re strumming over the percussion keys … stay tuned.

22 thoughts on ““Wish You Were Here” Cover On The Eigenharp Alpha

  1. Love the instrument, and I understand the idea behind attaching more natural gestures for playability, but somehow using the Eigenharp as a guitar replacement seems to not do the Eigenharp justice (as in, why not just use a guitar). I think dajebus just needs to look beyond this being a technology/playability demonstration to see other possibilities.

  2. Love the instrument, and I understand the idea behind attaching more natural gestures for playability, but somehow using the Eigenharp as a guitar replacement seems to not do the Eigenharp justice (as in, why not just use a guitar). I think dajebus just needs to look beyond this being a technology/playability demonstration to see other possibilities.

    And Bassoon comes to mind more than oboe.

  3. gotta agree… I'm sure in the right hands it's a great instrument for pushing things forward, but so far all I've seen is weird covers of songs that don't have anything to do with what this instrument seems styled to do. I think this is a great example of how it can very closely mimic the tone and playability of a decent acoustic guitar… but why would you want to?

    So far I've heard about as much mind blowing music from this instrument as I heard revolutionary guitar stuff from Gibson's never ending parade of "revolutionary" digital technology… aka none. So I'm with ya, jebus… losing interest fast.

    For that matter, I haven't heard much coming from the continuum fingerboard that tweaks my narbs. These are both cool instruments with a ton of flexibility, but it's sort of like the old "if a tree falls in a forest with no one around to hear it… does it make a sound?" question unless someone can step up and actually do something cool with it. It pains me that the coolest use of a continuum fingerboard is on a Dream Theater record.

    Has anyone done any good clips of the wind expression input on the Eigenharp? As a singer, the idea of being able to control synths and samples with my voice appeals greatly, but I'm not sure it can be used for that.

  4. The point of this demo was to demonstrate how sensitive the 'percussion keys' are, ie. they pick of the slightest brush and can be used for many other purposes besides drums. As you can see from the video, I'm mainly a guitar player and I agree, I will not trade in my Lakewood acoustic for an Eigenharp Alpha. That being said though, I might consider using it on stage to get a nice acoustic sound. Most of the time live acoustic guitar sound is horrible due to feedback issues.

  5. As with any instrument, it takes years to master and find your sound and tone with it. Experimenting various approaches are a natural path to this. It took me about 5 years before I started have a style on the guitar, the Eigenharp exists for a bit more than 1 year now … give it time. I don't expect to be the one that does something novel with the Eigenharp though, I consider myself too formatted by traditional instruments like the guitar and the piano. Someone that picks it up as his first instrument has a better chance at that.

    The Eigenharp Alpha allows you to attach a microphone to the breath pipe which can then be used to control synths and samples, I've been planning on making a demo for that. I'll move it up the list of things to do 🙂

  6. I don't mind this being used as a virtual guitar. It shows that it's just as capable as a keyboard controller for this sort of thing and a flexible instrument.

    I'd rather see some mind-blowing electronic stuff, though!

  7. I will definitely agree with this – your demo shows that the EH can very realistically approximate a rhythm acoustic guitar and it's quite damn impressive. However, and I really don't mean this in a snarky way, but would you agree that your lead acoustic guitar lines warble out of tune rather noticeably? Is this a technology or performance issue?

  8. thanks for clearing it up. I didn't see that you were actually posting on here or I probably wouldn't have been so harsh in my comments- I get that you are demoing this thing out to show what can be done with it, and I really thank you for doing it! And even more so for having the guts to show your face on the internet to a forum full of electro geeks 😉

  9. it just looks like something Jordan rudess would use and for me, that is not a good thing.

    i am in the minority probably since i was down-voted more than once.

    but its just nothing i would ever want to be seen using. its a little, goofy?

  10. No worries, I'm personally actually struggling to find any synth sounds that feel as natural to me as guitar sounds and piano sounds … but I'm searching, I hope to one day be able to post “mind-blowing electronic stuff“ with the Eigenharp Alpha 🙂

  11. Honestly, and I'm totally not a synth guy, I think it looks awesome. Cooler than an electric guitar and a much nice feel. It's very physical and you can really get into the groove while standing up without feeling keytar-ish. Every rock musician I know and all the other people from my band think it looks awesome also. However, taste is really not something that's debatable … so yeah, if you think it looks goofy, don't get seen with it … I'm personally yearning to get good enough to step on stage with it 🙂

  12. I think that's just a symptom of the way we expect things to work. Companies spend all that time and resources replicating something like an acoustic guitar or piano on something electronic, when really it'll never be quite as good as the actual thing. Meanwhile they could have spent that time on creating something that is equally or more expressive that doesn't have an analog counterpart, but it doesn't happen.

    Still love the eigenharp myself. Would love to own one myself, but it's out of my price range for a while to come yet.

  13. Right, except that here I just explored by myself in my free time, this wasn't done by Eigenlabs. It is using Native Instruments Kontakt with Orange Tree Samples EAG. I think that's the beauty of the Eigenharp, you can tap into the expressiveness in a variety of ways and apply it to software instruments.

    What you're saying is being done by Haken with the Continuum, there are built-in creative electronic sounds … but I personally find them thin sounding and lose interest pretty quick. As I said before, I've been searching for almost a year now and I still have to find an electronic sound that feels as intuitive and natural to me as traditional ones. I'm not giving up though, I'm actually planning on starting to experiment with coding something in C++ directly while exploring DSP programming.

  14. Right. This proof of concept was done using note-triggers (one for each string), which is supported by EAG. We're experimenting with something we call the 'Strummer' for the Eigenharp that will allow you to apply this control to any existing sound. It will also have the notion of actual 'strings' across the neck of the Alpha. For example, physically play the first row of keys with the first percussion key, the second row of keys with the second percussion key … and so on.

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