7 thoughts on ““Isn’t She Lovely” On The Glide”

1. Wow. Interesting. That brings quite a few new and surprising ideas to the table. I like that the “velocity” is kind of a “strike motion” with the right hand.

   He’s clearly put quite a bit of thought into making it very playable. The fact that it would require a significant amount of practice to master is another appealing thing to me.

   I look forward to more demos that involve something other than a simple oscillator.

   I had the thought that there could be a “trumpet mode” where the three buttons act like trumpet valves, some other aspect controls the register.

   1. Trumpet mode would be interesting. I haven’t played since High School 30 years ago but the fingerings are still burnt into muscle memory.

      1. Obviously, it would be of little use to anyone but trumpet/euphonium/french horn/tuba players. It also only requires 7 possible valve combinations, (and you get a maximum of a tritone’s worth of notes from the fingerings); so you’d be changing registers pretty often. Also, as the registers get closer together in the high range, it might difficult to set up the register switching to work without it being either cumbersome or awkward.

         As I try to imagine it more, I’m liking the trumpet-mode idea less.

         1. Yes, you’ve nailed the reasons why I didn’t go with a trumpet fingering. It only applies to brass players, and it’s highly idiosyncratic. Which makes sense, because it was dictated by the physics of a column of air.

            The fingering works like this:

            1 – xoo
            2 – xxo
            3 – oxo
            4 – oxx
            [octave break]
            5 – oox
            6 – xox
            7 – xxx

            Every note is just one finger away from the adjacent notes, which makes trills and scales very fast and easy. You can make any note sharp or flat by pushing the thumbstick left or right.

            The right-hand chooses the octave. There’s a somewhat in-depth walkthrough on the YouTube channel, if you want to check it out. I’m glad you are interested!

2. Thanks for the write up! I’ll hang out in the comments if anyone has any questions. 🙂

3. I have a few questions:

   1. Does it do all of this through generating MIDI messages?
   2. Does that right hand gesture measure “velocity” ?
   3. Does it do high-res control (14 bit NRPNs) for anything?– that might make some pitch or amp control more smooth– though some synths will smooth those CC inputs.
   4. Do your hands and arms stay pretty comfortable (ergonomically)?

   Thanks for joining the conversation, Keight. It’s really cool.

   1. 1. In this version, yes. The production version will have a few built in sounds, a 1/8th inch output, and a small speaker (for practice, mostly.) And BLE MIDI and USB MIDI.
      2. Yes, softer hits make softer sounds, louder ones are louder. I’ve set the threshold so it won’t do anything below (I think) 50 or so, so you won’t do accidental sounds on the up stroke if you don’t want. That will be user-adjustable, though.
      3. Yes, for pitch shifting and volume it’s using the MSB and LSB in combination. Occasionally you might hear some tearing or stepping in the pitch shifts, but that’s mostly because the BLE code hasn’t been optimized yet. Once it has, you have the full 16,383 levels of volume and pitch bend available.
      4. The really nice thing is that you aren’t tied down to any one position, like you are with a piano or drumset or cello or something like that. It’s very free, so you can play for a long time and not get tired. And the controllers aren’t very heavy at all.

      You also might be interested in this walkthrough video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTVUUq27KoU

      Hope that helps!