Oh my god, the Continuum looks like a nightmare! I would never buy something that expensive that could simply start sounding notes because I'd got a bit too carried away when playing it. Isn't that what music is about?
I was going to ask your thoughts about the Sensel Morph and the Joue Play that has now split into the Joue and the Joue Pro. I love the Buchla overlay for the Morph, or, at least, the look of it. It is about as far away from any playing surface I've ever seen. It kind of looks like a diving eagle, to me. Obviously, they are simple flat surfaces, ungiving surfaces and so will not appeal to you.
The Sensel Morph is quite nice, modern tech providing nice sensitivity. I was attracted to it because of ability to design your own playing surface layouts for it. Its true that the standard overlays have very little give, so the last thing I did with mine was stick a neoprene sheet to it instead. Using double-sided sticky tape, although I havent received a blue peter badge for these efforts. There were some firmware bugs with midi that made it slightly inconsistent but I believe they updated the firmware to fix some of that stuff and I havent had a chance to try it again since. Its on my list of things to do in the coming months.
The Joue has slightly more give in its overlays and there was one overlay in particular that made me want one. However this is one of those purchases where it turned out the product had a huge flaw that nobody was talking about. The pressure from one finger interferes massively with the values sent via pressure from another finger, making it absolutely useless for polyphonic aftertouch. I thought it was a firmware bug when I got one and discovered this issue, but when I asked on their forum they said it was a sensor limitation, what a bloody joke. And then much later they deleted their forum that I had that conversation on. On my shit list as a result for sure.
MPE is a weird one. Maybe not a weird one but I kind of see it like music's VR kit. Not even that, really. Although MPE within a VR environment? Whoa. But seriously, why don't professional keyboard players employ it? Or maybe they do? I can't say I've seen anyone employ the X axis recently. Bog standard MIDI just seems to hold much more promise and control. Now that MIDI 2.0 is on the horizon, on the horizon, on the horizon (when the actual fuck will anyone stick it in a piece of kit?) I wonder who will consider MPE as a road to travel? Plus there's the fact that you have to buy a controller with it added in, for much more money or, well, not bother and use MIDI, free MIDI instead. I do think that it is a bit like the salt of music. You have to keep adding more if you want to keep noticing it.
I sound really negative about it, don't I? I guess I would say that I'm sceptical. I haven't heard anything that MPE does that makes me think WOW. I am sure that it is absolutely brilliant playing it like you do, especially with your synth collection. My god, your synth collection!
Loads of people dont get it but I dont care because MPE survived and thrived despite the doubters. Just look at the number of synths, both hardware and software, that now support MPE. Even Ableton Live finally supports it properly as of version 11. The majority of musicians do not need to embrace something like this in order for it to be valid and successful and for there to be enough demand for it that manufacturers feel the need to eventually implement it.
In some ways the reception MPE gets is very similar to things like polyphonic aftertouch and the ribbon controller from the CS-80. Some people get it, love it, think its essential, and were very sad about the many years polyphonic aftertouch spent in the wilderness. Others see no need for it at all. Thats fine, both can co-exist. ASM certainly sold quite a few Hydrasynths because they included polyphonic aftertouch in the keybed.
Factors that influence whether there is any point to MPE for people include the time it takes to adapt playing style to make good use of it, the type of music being played, and whether someone wants to control multiple parameters directly in an expressive way as opposed to relying on traditional aspects of synthesis to modulate those values. Things come alive for me when 'I am the envelope, I am the human LFO' and so I've been sold on the expressive principals since the first time I picked up an Eigenharp Pico (which was a doomed device from the start but thats another story).
The types of controller available ths far has definately been a complicating factor. Loads of proper keyboard players dont like the mushy nature of the Roli stuff. And even those that embrace it face a learning curve and likely many years of practice before they are confident enough to include such things in their professional playing. Osmose is of significant interest in that regard because it holds the promise of being a better fit with existing keyboard skills, although we still have to wait and see if that proves to be the case.
eta: ok, so I've been watching this promo of the Osmose. Of course, Jordan Rudess is on there. Has any keyboard anywhere ever been released without his beard somewhere in the promo? He seems to be super excited about every keyboard he is involved with. I imagine he's never not excited, bless him. It does look very very good for an MPE controller. Although, for £1800 I'd want a few lessons off old Jordan himself. Maybe that's part of the package? Still, I wonder how many of those people who demoed it will be buying one? We'll see. It also kind of backs up what I believe in that you need to be bloody good on the auld keys to make it work for you.
Peak Rudess becoming a bit of a joke due to overexposed, overenthusiastic salesmanship was years ago. I preordered the Osmose for significantly less than the final retail price but it remains to be seen how much Brexit, the pandemic and global supply shortages scupper my original expectations, original timescale expectations have already gone to pot. The original announcement generated significant excitement for good reason, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating so we'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime the Roli Lumi keyboards, the build quality and feel of which I do not particularly like, now offer somewht similar functionality since they added the ability to invoke pitch changes by slightly wiggling the keys left to right. Its the large range of primary and secondary aftertouch that I most look forward to on the Osmose, but until its in my hands I cannot say much more.
I do not believe that you need to be bloody good at keys to get something out of these things. I can get a lot out of these devices even if I'm only using a few fingers and relatively crude/non-traditional ways of playing. There are lots of different ways to harness this stuff. Time spent working out how to get something out of it for you, and then practice, practice, practice is essential, but thats true of any instrument.
Hopefully a theme is becoming apparent with what I'm saying - embrace the differences between people. There is no one answer, needs and desires vary, skills vary, budgets vary, styles of music vary. This stuff isnt for everybody, and it isnt for nobody. I can be very happy and excited about my own use of it, without trying to evangelically convert non-believers. I dont really care what anyone else is doing, apart from needing a certain level of success to ensure this stuff is sustainable. From the world of computers etc I am used to embracing gimmicks that dont gain traction and die out, so I was very pleased that MPE support managed to get beyond such initial hurdles.
MIDI 2.0 is complicated and has many aspects, some of which arent even finished yet when it comes to the minute detail of the specs. Multiple parts of the ecosystem of hardware and software need to implement specific aspects of MIDI 2.0 that actually offer compelling, useful functionality in order for this stuff to gain traction. It will be a slow journey and we havent yet reached the stage where any such compelling scenarios are available. We are at the stage where a few people ask stupid qustions about 'why no MIDIi 2.0 support?' without actually describing which aspects of MIDI 2.0 they want to see. I suppose if I had to guess, what we'll see first is stuff on the 'auto discovery of capabilities' side of things, because certain manufacturers will see the opportunity for devices to offer fancy functionality without the traditional configuration pain that stops many users from bothering to set this stuff up in the traditional, laborious manner. Different aspets of MIDI 2.0 do offer further expressive potential beyond MPE, but for now MPE is often good enough, and crucially supported by enough different parts of the ecosystem, so I expect only slow evolution on the expressive front when it comes to MIDI 2.0. Indeed I tend to think that MPE is one of the things that woke the midi standards people from their long slumber in the first place. Another hurdle that MIDI 2.0 has to overcome is on the physical signal transport side of things - last time I checked they did not play to support traditional Midi din connections, rather embracing modern bi-directional, packet based communication. Which means USB and/or network connections. This will inevitably slow adoption in regards certain scenarios, increasing my sense that people should expect a narrow subset of specific MIDI 2.0 functionality to first be offered by a handful of manufacturers, to offer something compelling and of obvious use. I place no bets on how well or how quickly this will happen.
I could go on but let's leave it there.
