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An Eigenharp is a brand of electronic instrument made by Eigenlabs, a company based in Devon, UK[1]. It resembles a combination of a bassoon and sitar in appearance, with buttons that can be pressed and a mouthpiece that can be blown into to make notes.[2] It was first made available in 2009 in two sizes, Eigenharp Alpha, the fully featured model, and Eigenharp Pico, a smaller and cheaper model. It is the first musical controller made for both playing and sequencing.
British entrepreneur John Lambert founded Eigenlabs in 2001 in a barn on his Devon farm with a small team of designers and programmers and some private funding.
The Eigenharp Alpha has 120 small keys which are sensitive on 3 axes. Pressure modulates the volume of a note, while an up-down motion modulates pitch, and a lateral motion modulates a filter. It has an additional 12 keys toward the bottom of the instrument which are larger, more robust versions of the 120 main keys, and are intended primarily for playing percussion, although they can be assigned to any sound. There are two ribbon controllers on the Eigenharp Alpha. one is typically assigned to modify pitch, and the other to control filter parameters. It has a base station with inputs for external expression pedals and USB connectivity.
The Alpha model features step sequencing, which allows for performances to be programmed and saved, or for accompaniments to be performed in real time. It also has 80 musical scales stored in software. This allows the performer to simply select which scale is to be played and play it across the face of the instrument with the same keys for every scale. This saves the performer from having to learn the note intervals and relevant fingerings for each scale. If the performer prefers, however, scales can be played using proper note intervals, as they would be on an instrument such as a piano or a guitar.
The Eigenharp Alpha is a MIDI instrument, and requires a computer to operate. At present only the Mac platform is supported, although Windows implementation is planned. It comes with physical models of several instruments, and supports the Soundfont, AU, and AIFF formats. Through MIDI, it can control external software instrument models as well as other MIDI instuments. A CV/Gate controller is planned, which will allow the Eigenharp to control older analog synthesizers which were manufactured prior to the implementation of the MIDI standard.
The Pico model has only 18 playing keys, a breath pipe, 4 mode keys and one ribbon controller. It is powered by USB and supports the same sound formats as the Alpha model.