Can Your Keyboard Do This? (Endeavour EVO Preview)

Here’s a demo of a prototype of the Endeavour EVO controller, by German company Endeavour.

EVO is described as “the first keyboard with touch sensitive keys.” Watch closely in the video and you can see how the finger placement on the key can be used to control facets of individual notes, independent of other notes.

The EVO controller is priced at 499.00 euro for the 24-key version and 799.00 euro for a 48-key version. 

Both versions feature:

  • Touch and pressure sensitive, unweighted keys
  • Black pulver-coated aluminum housing
  • 100 MBit/s Ethernet-Interface
  • External Power Supply

via RobertKarasekGermanymatrixsynth

11 thoughts on “Can Your Keyboard Do This? (Endeavour EVO Preview)

  1. Is this the first keyboard to have this capability, and if so, why? Was the technology not available before, or is this the first ‘affordable’ version?
    Looks really cool though – I wonder what the action is like.

  2. Looks fun. Reminds me some of the Buchla Marimba Lumina controller (though that’s not really a “keyboard”).

  3. Just got my Evo (the big one) a couple of months back. It’s a very interesting thing, but clearly still in development. I have a few keys that don’t work properly and I’ve not yet contacted the company about it to see about repairing it.

    Is it a quality product? It could be. The keys are much longer than standard but a little narrow, allowing parameter control along their length. Unfortunately, playing this requires you to forego your normal finger placements, as you now have to pay close attention to WHERE you strike the keys in order not to whang parameters all over the place. And unless you’re a tiny-handed person, you won’t be playing between the black keys at all. All this also makes for a rather shallow key throw and a rather wobbly feeling under the fingers. If you’re a keybed snob, you’re probably NOT going to like this feeling. Like I said, it’s LIGHT, SHALLOW and WOBBLY. Otherwise, the aluminum case and overall construction are nice and feel very sturdy.

    The keyboard relies on a poorly-documented (unless you’re a proficient German speaker) interface provided by software and a USB connection. That said, once you get it working, it seems VERY stable; mappings work as expected and the whole system seems a far sight better than the mess that Eigenlabs threw out with the first Eigenharps (what I measure EVERY experimental interface experience against).

    I will provide a suitable review and demo once I work out the issue with the broken keys. I haven’t had it working properly yet, so it’s probably not the time to do one.

  4. Hhhhhhhhmmmmhhhhh, maybe if they bring the price down and work out the bugs.
    For now I will just use the Modulation wheels on my keyboard thank you.

  5. What is the difference with polyphonic aftertouch ? Unless I am missing something I can get the same result with poly AT on my GEM S2.

  6. I think that pressing DOWN on the key (pressure) is much more natural than sliding the finger up and down on it, because with pressure you do NOT need to change your playing technique, but with sliding you have to be careful where on each key you touch first, depending on where you want to slide to (up or down) and this makes you rethink your whole playing technique. Still, it’s a step forward.

    1. One thing that’s important to keep in mind is that this keyboard isn’t for playing traditional keyboard music – it’s for playing electronic instrument expressively.

      Just like an organ style keyboard is great for organ music but lousy for piano music, or how synth keyboards are great for fast basslines but terrible with piano VSTs – this makes sense for synth patches with sustain, where you want to control the sustain expressively.

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