How can I learn to be great at designing new EaganMatrix presets? +

We strongly encourage you to play your Continuum and/or Osmose, and concentrate on developing your own unique technique and approach to your instrument. Look for good performances on-line in a wide variety of styles; try to imitate those performers and their techniques. Practice, practice, practice. Work through the System Preset library, learn how to play each preset. Some EaganMatrix presets have very particular ways of playing them; you will not be able to tell what a preset is like by trying it for a few seconds, since so much depends on playing techniques unique to that preset.

Most people will be best served by spending time playing and experimenting, and customizing EaganMatrix System Presets by adjusting the i,ii,iii,iv barrels. More in-depth sound design will not be a priority for most people; performance skill is more important than sound design skill, because fancy sound design will never make up for poor performance skill with the EaganMatrix.

If you want to join the rarified group of outstanding EaganMatrix preset designers, begin by playing a lot and developing your listening skills. Once you have developed good listening and playing skills, start to make simple modifications to System Presets. To help this effort, study the User Guides (in the "Support" area of this web site) and work through Richard Kram's "EaganMatrix Programming" YouTube channel. Afterwards, study the System Presets; delve deeply into one preset at a time, and study exactly how it works, and how you could modify it. This process might take weeks for just one preset. Don't confuse an easy-to-play preset with a good preset. Take your time, enjoy the lifelong learning and discovery experience.

EaganMatrix formulas incorporate Y (front-to-back) position of fingers on the Continuum playing surface; is there a counterpart on the Osmose keyboard? +

The Osmose provides Y information in a very different way. As soon as you begin pressing down a key, the Osmose continually tracks key position (Z) until you hit an initial "stop" at max Z. Then, if you press more, you get a different feel, and you are moving in the Y direction. The EaganMatrix preset can utilize the detailed contour of your initial attack (many Z values, not just a single 7-bit key velocity or "strike" value), and then utilize Y to affect details of the decaying timbre. This is just one example of how the Osmose Y and Z can be used in an EaganMarix preset. By making the Y feel so different from Z (before and after that "stop" point) Expressive E has successfully made fine Z and Y control feel quite natural to keyboard players, without interfering with traditional keyboard technique.

Can I easily modify transfer functions to make the EaganMatrix system presets work with with other controllers? +

The EaganMatrix may not be what you think – it is not just a series of transfer functions in front of a sound engine that automates all the details of the sound – that is what other Midi synths do, but not the EaganMatrix.

There is a lot of skill in designing good EaganMatrix presets, much like there is a lot of skill in designing acoustic instruments -- and those skills will take time to learn. Unlike traditional Midi synths, the EaganMatrix is designed for continuous interaction. Think of playing an acoustic trumpet – you continually micro-adjust what you do with your breath and lips throughout each note – else the sound goes bad or quits. If you use the same trumpet sound but interact with it using a string instrument bow, it is really a new animal. Sure, some parts of the trumpet sound will still be there, but the interaction with the sound – the most important part of the playing experience – will be different. So a well-designed EaganMatrix preset must be customized in a deep way for each controller, not just superficial transfer functions. Skilled EaganMatrix preset designers leave behind the generica of the traditional Midi controller world.

The best EaganMatrix presets are unlike samplers or sound morphing synths, where the fine structure of the sound is automated and canned in the synthesizer. In the traditional Midi world, controllers are interchangeable by simply adjusting transfer functions because controllers only start and stop notes, and performers have limited interaction with the sound during notes. Generic interchangeability is not present in the best EaganMatrix presets, where the details of a note's timbre evolution are continually affected by interaction with the player, and thus depend heavily on the particular physical interface.

How is the EaganMatrix different on the Osmose keyboard? +

In the acoustic world, a piano has advantages over a violin for playing more notes more quickly more accurately -- and it has the disadvantage of losing fluidity and free-tuning. In the EaganMatrix world, you will hear the difference between an Osmose keyboard and a Continuum, despite the EaganMatrix sound engine being identical.

Some of Lippold Haken's favorite Theremin recordings are Theremin with Piano -- the differences in the instruments make for such beauty together. He is looking forward to the next ContinuuCon (in Lisbon) -- it will include duets between Continuum and Osmose, and he thinks those performances will have a similar beauty.

If I play the same EaganMatrix preset on an Osmose keyboard and a Continuum Fingerboard, will it sound the same? +

To anyone with listening skills developed from playing non-keyboard instruments, the "pitch rounding" that happens at every note on a keyboard makes it sound totally unlike a Continuum. Even if you use the same preset, the physical interface with which you interact with that preset is paramount. Much of what makes the Continuum sound so unique among synthesizers (and meld with acoustic ensembles so well) is that the performer is always trying to play perfectly in-tune, but can never actually achieve perfect intonation. This differs from a keyboard in two ways: (1) In one sense, a keyboard is always perfectly in-tune at the beginning of a note, since the lever you hit determines the beginning pitch. (2) In another sense, a keyboard is always out-of-tune, since it cannot play perfect intervals. In the last 100 years people have gotten used to the equal tempered scale, but it is a bit like getting used to fast food -- the real thing still has appeal. In the real thing, you are not picking from a set of predefined pitches for each note; instead, each note is its own event, adjusted by the performer to what is going on at the time. The advantages of a keyboard come at a cost; the Continuum and Osmose do not replace each other, they complement each other.