Organizers of ContinuuCon 2024, the sixth international Haken Continuum conference, have announced that the event will feature a panel discussion focusing on some of the unique synths featured on Hans Zimmer’s Dune 2 soundtrack.

The event is scheduled for April 26–28 in the Pittsburgh suburb of Carnegie, Pennsylvania. Continuum and Osmose players and interested musicians can look forward to a reception on the opening night and two full days of presentations, workshops, and demonstrations by some of the world’s foremost authorities on the Haken Continuum and EaganMatrix.

Zimmer hired ContinuuCon organizers and EaganMatrix developers Edmund Eagan and Christophe Duquesne to design and perform sounds for the soundtrack, along with Expressive E’s Guillaume Bonneau. The above image captures, from left to right, Christophe Duquesne, Edmund Eagan, Hans Zimmer & Guillaume Bonneau in Zimmer’s studio.

At ContinuuCon, Eagan and Duquesne will play audio examples from the film and reveal programming techniques used on the Dune: Part Two soundtrack.

In addition:

• Eagan will provide instruction on EaganMatrix programming.
• Continuum inventor Lippold Haken will discuss the Continuum’s most recent updates and unveil plans for the future.
• Duquesne will demonstrate his latest experiments in additive resynthesis.
• Electronic musician and ContinuuCon organizer Russ Hoffman will discuss Chick Corea’s treatise on best practices for playing music in an ensemble.
• Thereminist and Continuum expert Rob Schwimmer will discuss Continuum performance technique.
• Canadian composer Tony K.T. Leung will demonstrate an expressive controller of his own design that allows a string player to control eight dimensions of the EaganMatrix using familiar performance gestures.
• Engineer Mark Smart will explain how to control a 3-dimensional laser show using the Haken Continuum and Native Instruments’ Reaktor software.
• Paul Dempsey will present the HC-One plug-in, which allows VCV Modular software to interface with EaganMatrix hardware devices.
• David Gerard Matthews will discuss and demonstrate the Ondes Martenot, a precursor to the Continuum.

Ticket sales for the annual electronic music event are ongoing, with early-bird pricing ending on Monday, March 25. Conference tickets are $280 until that date and $320 thereafter. See the event site for details.