Sunday Synth Jam: Rob Schwimmer plays Eric Clapton’s “Steppin’ Out” on the Haken Continuum Fingerboard.
Schwimmer (who many of our readers will know for his work on Theremin and as member of the NY Theremin Society) describes the music:
“This is a replica of Eric Clapton’s slashing, aggressive and thrilling guitar classic recorded March 1966 from John Mayall’s ‘The Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton’ here played on the amazing Haken Continuum Fingerboard!
The nature of bending notes on the Continuum make it a perfect fit for blues phrasing… Here I used Edmund Eagan’s Larynx Horn sound to start with which gives it the ‘vocal formant envelope’ which I like a lot… Incredible responsiveness… although maybe not your typical blues sound… I did the backing track (bass, saxes, drums) on Kontakt and Battery and some processing for the Continuum with Guitar Rig from Native Instruments.
The original LP was after [the time when] Clapton was with The Yardbirds and before [he began playing with] Cream–One of my favorite blues guitar albums of all time…”
Find out more about the Haken Continuum Fingerboard at hakenaudio.com.
This is so sad….. please stop
ditto – plse stop
This is possibly a very interesting instrument with some unique applications – but playing an awful, cheesy formant synth version of an Eric Clapton blues solo is definitely not the way to demonstrate it. Wow.
Who are these users with only proper first names and overly harsh opinions? Does Rob Schwimmer have any personal enemies here? Or perhaps a disgruntled Haken ex-employee? Every commenter on YouTube seems to think this is great, and I don’t think it’s so bad myself (although, I tend to prefer Joe Jackson’s.)
Great piece of gear, and Schwimmer plays it really naturally. But I think the Continuum has most artistic potential as a controller for (analog) synthesizers, not as a guitar imitator.
Rob, I would encourage you to spend some more time on your feel…your eighth-note feel is unsettled.
Synthtopia comments/opinions are ridiculous.
Worst music site ever.
“Worst music site ever.”
Glad to know that you think we’re #1! Thanks for the feedback!
“Thanks for the feedback”
That would make a great title to a documentary about Live Sound Engineers