I'm sure everyone on this forum want's a ribbon controller, a Continuum, or most likely both. Me being the risk taker I am ( :rolleyes: ) bought one of these to experiment and find out if it could do what we all want to be able to do, and possibly more.
Firstly, the packaging. Mine arrived in a large box filled with those annoying peanuts. The module and controller were not in individual boxes, just set in the peanuts. It came with a rather large selection of seemingly nonrelated materials.
- A Virus TI demo CD, a Virus catalog for this year, some CD demo of an ambient band, a Doepfer catalog and the manual. A card for a subscription to some magazine was also included.
Seting up the physical components is easy. Plug in the annoying wall wart power supply, connect the ribbon with the 6 pian cable. The module has no on/off switch, but that hasn't been a problem for me. The ribbon is very heavy, very sturdy and could take more beating than I plan on giving. The module is a bit lighter, and I'm sure the display is prone to damage more than the casing, but it still seems more the sturdy enough for most use.
Uses -
The horizontal sensor can do a few things -
- generate note on/offf data
- generate multi note on/off, with pitch bend
- generate single note on w/ pitch bend, not changing notes until you release pressure from the sensor
- generate single note and pitch bend data
(only 1 note, selectable from the menu is generated when in this mode. You can also generate no note and pb up/down from the center a note played on the keyboard
- program change
- aftertouch
- control
Vertical sensor can do a few as well
- PB up
- PB dn
- aftertouch
- program change
- control
Now I wont delve into all of the functions in this post, but will talk about them if any one request so. I will focus mainly on the 2 aspects I purchased this to imitate
1) Kurzweil K2*** ribbon controller
Settings used?
Horizontal - Pitch&Fix Note
Veritcal - control (controls modulation on the Fantom)
NoteCtrlNumber - set to "0" so that no note on/off is generated
Use-
1st, find the relative center of the controller. Play a note on your board, and find that spot that pressing does not cause a change in pitch. You must be precised, as it is very senstive over its length to change in position. Once found, mark it somehow. I used a black sharpie. Now you can bend to your hearts content! Moving left bends down the ammount specified by the sound, right = up etc. Applying more pressure to the sensor brings in whatever you have controller by the mod lever.
Pros - Much easier and accurate to use in some situations than the standard Fantom X/Y stick.
Cons - THe module can only send on 1 MIDI channel. If you need to bend more than 1 sound at a time, you either need to set them on the same MIDI channel. However, this forces all parts on that channel to have the same volume, pan, etc. On the Fantom, I found a way around this-
- Leave all parts in Perf on opriginal MIDI channels, set volume, pan,
etc as needed for your Perf. Once all is set, save your settings. If you
go to Part View -> External -> and change all the sounds you need to
control to RX channel "1". This will keep all your previous settings, but
allow all to be controlled by the ribbon. Keep in mind that if you
change the volume of one of the parts controlled by the ribbon, it will
reset all parts on MIDI ch1 to match the part you changed.
- The "control" function of the veritcal sensor is very sensitive, and you must be careful to press lightly and avoid always triggering modulation or whatever you have it set to.
2) Haken Continuum
Settings Used?
Horizontal - Note and Pitch Absolute
( this mode divides the length of the ribbon into X number of zone,
depending on how many octaves you set the length for. Each
includes a note and its bending range. In each zone, you can play
a note and bend it up or down. )
Vertical - Control (once again modulation)
NoteControlNumber - set this for what note you want to be generated at the
far left of the sensor. For example, "36" produces a C2.
Now this is where it gets tricky. In order to use with any results at all in the Continuum fashion, your sound itself must have a few qualities.
1) PB range up and down of .50 semitones. A 1/4 step if you will. The Fantom can't do this, but some software I have can. You must set it like that so that the top of 1 notes zone is equivelant to the bottom of the next notes zone. Therefore you have a smooth transition from note to note, all the way across the ribbons range.
2)The sound must not have a noticeable attack or retrigger when changing notes. Having Solo/Legato on will help this. Otherwise you will hear the note retrigger as you change zones.
Now assuming you know exactly where the position were each note is generated without PB, you can more or less play Conituum style stuff. The easiest way to make sure you are hitting the right place is to divide the lengh of the controller in m/in/etc by the # of ((octavesx12) +1). Say you are using 3 octaves, divide the length by 37. 3x12 = 36, 36+1 = 37. This will give you the length of 1 zone, divide that in half and finds it exact center. This will be the exact note pitch point. The sensor itself is 50cm long, so here are some rough #s.
3 octave setting -
Each zone will be 1.35cm long, with its center being .675cm from the beginning of the zone.
Make a clear overlay with markings of each zones limits and its center, and put this over the controller. You can now exactly what pitch you are going to hit, where it is, etc.
Pros - Doesn't cost $3000
Cons - alot of work, might not even work with alot of keyboards, hard to use, so on and so forth. Once again, the control function is very sensitive.
Thats the best way I cann figure out to simulate either of those functions with the most success, but I will continue to search. In the meantime, I will leave you with som eye candy of my babies =D
