Musikmesse 2012: The Endeavour Evo Keyboard, described as the ‘worlds first keyboard with touch sensitive keys’, now has a synthesizer, Evosizer.
The Evo keyboard is unique in that it has capacitive touch sensors for each key. This means it can read your fingers’ movement on top of a key’s surface. So, in addition to pitch and velocity, the Evo adds a third layer of polyphonic data input.
The Evosizer is designed specifically to work with the unique expressive capabilities of the keyboard and can translate the movement of your fingers, toward or away from the keyboard, into changes in the synthesized sound.
Here is an overview of Evosizer:
http://vimeo.com/38530827[
This power doesn’t come cheap, though. The Evo Series One retails for 2700 Euro. This may get more affordable soon, though. CDM’s Peter Kirn reports that Endeavor is working on a smaller and more affordable version, that is expected to be introduced by the end of the year.
Check out the demo and let us know what you think of the Evosizer!
Something about the way this sounds made me think of Vangelis.
Do you think it’s the polyphonic after touch?
It looks like a synth made by Apple
Pretty cool, but this thing still needs knobs, pitch bend and mod wheels. Yes, I know that you can map this stuff to the keys, but that’s not going to work for everything. If you’re going to pay this much for a controller, it should have more going on. This is a one trick pony.
I don’t think its a one-trick pony. I think it IS evolutionary. In a sense, that third sensing aspect sort of puts a Kaoss Pad on each key, which requires some careful forethought. Then the user will have to practice quite a bit to really mesh with its feel. Suddenly, a key is not just an on-off switch anymore. That makes it immediate, like a bowed instrument. It will take time to see if the users and general market champion the thing, but I suspect it can at least become the next Eigenharp or Continuum.
Animoog controller!!!
I absolutely love the idea of having a keyboard that would do this, but it’s way too expensive. My iPad is giving me “enough” of this capability for a fraction of the cost. Will be great when this kind of thing becomes widely affordable though.
I think that Madrona Labs has a more promising interface.This thing looks like a pain to deal with in terms of expressive playing and I mean that quite literally.Any attempt at serious pianistic technique would soon fall by the way side,when attempting to implement it’s rather limited range of movement in any kind of musical way.This looks a recipe for rsi and frustration.
This is NOT the first. I’m not entirely sure who was the first, but I do know that Bob Moog finished the “MTS” keyboard with this same functionality in 1989 (after having worked on it for many years). Here is an article on it: http://www.moogfoundation.org/about/humble-visionary/in-the-workshop/