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A new instrument found unusual success
- retox 3y ago>A metre-long cross between a piano and electric guitar, the harpejji
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lmpdev 3y agoAbsolutely awful they are patent trolling so hard with this Feels exactly like E-Ink Let us have cheap copies for the masses!
- cush 3y ago> patent trolling They’re just not licensing the patent to other manufacturers. Patent trolling is an entirely different thing.
- zarzavat 3y agoIt’s a form of patent trolling. The point of patents is that inventors should be compensated fairly for their inventions. Not that they should be able to prevent the production of those inventions like little dictators - that does not advance society.
- Tor3 3y agoThe point of patents is that you get an exclusive monopoly for the invention for a limited time, but to get that monopoly you have to publish (as a patent) the design and it's a free for all _after_ the monopoly time has passed. You are free to license the invention to others, but there's no requirement - it's not a part of the patent system.
- donatzsky 3y agoA patent is a time-limited monopoly on an invention, so yes, preventing others from making the same thing is exactly what a patent is for. The idea being that during this time, the inventor can either be the sole source of the widget, thus profiting from it directly, or licence it to someone else. Either case means that they get "compensated fairly".
- flangola7 3y agoThat is not what a patent is for. It may unfortunately currently be legal, but that isn't its true purpose.
- Tor3 3y agoPlease explain its true purpose then. The "exclusive rights in exchange for publishing" seems to have been the very idea behind patents for hundreds of years, all the way back to Jerusalem and Venezia according to Wikipedia, and also defined as such in the modern patent systems established later, in the US and elsewhere.
- teddyh 3y agoIIUC, U.S. patents were constructed to be an immigration policy tool. “Come to America, get paid for your knowledge!” This would encourage people who knew how to build and make things to immigrate to the U.S. Note that patents are an optional part of the constitution; not an inherent right of inventors.
- eesmith 3y agoThat's exactly what a patent is. The purpose (at least for the US) is stated in the US Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8: > [The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. Now quoting from the US Patent and Trademark Office at https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/essentials#questions https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/essentials#questions "A U.S. patent gives you, the inventor, the right to “exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling” an invention or “importing” it into the U.S. ... What is granted is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell or import the invention, but the right to stop others from doing so. If someone infringes on your patent, you may initiate legal action."
- cwillu 3y agoThe inventor is not holding on to the rights in order to collect payouts from third parties that inadvertently infringed on the invention. No, it's not a form of trolling at all.
- coldtea 3y ago>It’s a form of patent trolling No, it's not. Patent trolling has a specific meaning (having vacuous broad patents or using patents against companies who aren't really infringing, associated with not having an actual product and making your money off this, usually having hoarded many patents exactly for this purpose). This is simply the creator of this design enforcing their patent, like any business with a patented product does. >Not that they should be able to prevent the production of those inventions like little dictators - that does not advance society. Nope, it's exactly that they should be able to control the production of their inventions. If it wasn't for that control, patents would have no practical purpose.
- khazhoux 3y agoThe point of patents is quite literally that inventors get to control the production of their inventions.
- cush 3y agoSociety wouldn’t advance if anyone could copy the work of others either. Gender would swoop in, create these on the cheap and completely ruin the sound that the creator intended.
- cush 3y agoFender*
- braunboffel 3y ago> They’re just not licensing the patent to other manufacturers Who? Some data backing the claim up please.
- cush 3y agoNo. It’s impossible to provide data for a negative like this. I searched for data on how they’re protecting their patent and found nothing. You’re just sealioning (which is ironically a form of online trolling). You provide the data. You’re the one making the claim that they’re trolling.
- braunboffel 3y agoI'm confused. You made a statement that they're not licensing their patent. I'm asking you what is that based on. Who asked to license their patent and was denied? Surely you have that since you made that claim right? Just your imagination or actual verifiable evidence that the rest of us can check? If challenging your claim is trolling or sealioning or cat fishing or bear baiting or worm wiggling, then so be it.
- rapht 3y agoI'm not a fan of patents, but in that case, it's not like some bigco seeking to perpetually extend monopolistic rights on some product - the inventor is alive, they made what seems like a genuine contribution to the world, and that contribution is very concrete and complete - not some hollow vaguely generic not directly usable "design". So it's actually a case where patents are a good fit: the inventor gets to decide the life of their design (and make a bit of money out of it) before anyone can use it freely.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoThat might be good for the inventor, but that whole thinking that the inventor’s rights trump the rest of the world’s is pre-modern. As we have seen from the last couple of decades, it is always better for consumers when the “official” product exists alongside some cheaper version that one can order from e.g. Aliexpress.
- dbalatero 3y agoOwning a harpejji is not exactly a human right or anything. Let the guy get some money off the massive R&D and creativity that went into the instrument before kicking it over to Behringer to release the $300 clone.
- bmacho 3y ago> I'm not a fan of patents, but in that case, it's not like some bigco seeking to perpetually extend monopolistic rights on some product - the inventor is alive, they made what seems like a genuine contribution to the world, and that contribution is very concrete and complete - not some hollow vaguely generic not directly usable "design". If the inventor keeps the prices too high, then it is basically the same as ensuring that the public can't have it. That's not good. Inventors and investors should be compensated, and cheap alternatives from other manufacturers should appear.
- rwmj 3y agoThe patents all seem to have priority dates around 2007-2009, so they should be free in the next 3-5 years: https://patents.justia.com/inventor/timothy-e-meeks https://patents.justia.com/inventor/timothy-e-meeks
- silversmith 3y agoSoo... Electric version of concert kokle? And that got patented?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rawrawrawrr 3y agoIt's very different from kokle. The harpejji is tapped, while the kokle is strummed, for one. A closer comparison would be a chapman stick.
- coldtea 3y agoIn the same sense that "Dropbox is a version of curlftpfs plus SVN, and still it got funded!".
- p0w3n3d 3y agobut dropbox is not patented and you are not prevented from making your own CurlFtpFS and SVN system
- Mizza 3y agoI came up with something similar, in the opposite direction: https://github.com/Miserlou/LaunchBoard https://github.com/Miserlou/LaunchBoard It's an Ableton device to map the keys of a Novation LaunchPad as if it were an 8 string, 8 fret guitar. I play the guitar but not the piano, but play a lot of synths. This bridges the gap for me, and it's so, so, so much fun. I'm thinking about doing a dedicated hardware version with proper midi out, touch sensitivity and integrated capo/octave knobs. Maybe worth dusting that idea off if this guy was so successful..
- elihu 3y agoThere are some reasonable ways to do pressure-sensitive buttons cheaply. I'm also working on an electronic instrument. What I do is glue felt on the back of a sheet of 1/8" birch ply (using liquid hide glue), and then laser cut all my button tops out of that. The buttons are held in place by a laser-cut wooden frame, also 1/8" birch ply but without the felt. I stick packing tape to the back of the frame sticky-side up, so I can drop the button-tops in place (felt side down) and they stay put without falling out. The felt is there so the bottons have a little give to them when you press on them. This wood/tape/felt assembly sits on top of a sheet of force-sensitive resistor, which in turn sits on a printed circuit board. Under each button there are two sets of exposed (ENIG-plated) copper traces configured like interdigitized fingers. Pressing on the button presses on the FSR which presses against the traces, and the electrical resistance between both sets of traces drops. You can measure the drop with a simple voltage divider circuit connected to an ADC. By using a lot of multiplexers or certain kinds of shift registers, it's possible to read hundreds of buttons. Sensitronics makes a very nice FSR material, but I've found Velostat works quite nicely too and is vastly cheaper.
- yummypaint 3y agoI have used velostat for this purpose with a similar design, but i had too many problems with self-consistency of response across different buttons. There was a fair amount of hysteresis too, i thought too much to be usable as an instrument. I am wondwering if the felt is the secret sauce? I am moving toward 3d printed pivoting keys with an internal mirrored surface that reflects variable amounts of light into a photoresistor depending on depression. Would prefer the velostat though if it can work reliably
- taylorius 3y agoI'm surprised they got the patent on this thing - seems pretty similar to a Chapman stick.
- coldtea 3y agoThe commonality is "string instrument with many strings", which would include a lot of things (electric hammered dulcimers for example). This, however, has important differences in design and operation, the most significant of which is the use of "an electronic muting system to dampen unfretted strings and minimize the impact of sympathetic vibrations."
- elihu 3y agoIf I understand right, the Harpejji uses individual per-string pickups and uses an electronic muting system. Touching a string to any of the frets completes a circuit that causes the onboard electronics to unmute that particular string. That's pretty unique. The Chapman Stick just uses a mechanical damper where the nut is so the open strings don't ring out, and fairly standard magnetic pickups.
- rwmj 3y agoThis (somewhat annoying) youtuber played one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFzW9rnaR7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFzW9rnaR7w
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hliyan 3y agoThis looked incredibly complicated to play initially, but at this particular point of the "Playing basics" video, I was sold: https://youtu.be/AUnvq2zRU6k?t=85 https://youtu.be/AUnvq2zRU6k?t=85 And it gets better when you see the scales and chords section. The video also explains that it uses piezoelectric sensors.
- jasonjmcghee 3y agoJacob Collier (relatively famous musician) has a number of videos playing the Harpejji. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5T-9RPW4pg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5T-9RPW4pg He has a lot of great content in general and musical talent, if you’ve never come across him before. Worth diving into.
- wazoox 3y agoJustin Lee Schultz also plays the Harpejji, and plays both piano and guitar like a monster. :)
- lightlyused 3y agoWell worth going to see live. You will not be disappointed.
- mkaic 3y agoI'll be seeing him live next month at the Hollywood Bowl and I'm extremely excited. Can't wait to participate in the audience choir at the end of the show.
- raincole 3y agoSlightly off topic, but I really want an instrument that works like LinnStrument but with a synth built-in (so you can actually play it without connecting to something else).
- elihu 3y agoHaken Continuum, perhaps? The same Eaganmatrix engine used in the Continuum has also shown up in the Expressive E Osmose, so apparently Haken is willing to work with other companies to integrate their synth in more products -- and the result is quite an amazing device. Haken also makes a standalone Eurorack module. I'm not sure if there's a good open-source MPE synth that's easy to port to microcontrollers. Surge is really impressive but it's not made to run on simple embedded platforms.
- LeegleechN 3y agoAbleton Push 3 (standalone version). It's only an 8x8 grid though.
- raincole 3y agoToo bad. If it's 8x16 I'll be much more interested. (I don't want to DIY something like "2 Ableton Push 3 combined".)
- xyzzy123 3y agoYou can bolt one in / under / on the side, and map controls for it. The MVP is duct tape but it's possible to get a small synth & battery into the case. I know it's not quite the same thing as you're asking for, but when you dig into the linnstrument it turns out to be very hackable.
- raincole 3y agoThe problem is a "small synth", like a Arturia Minibrute still feels quite large. And what should I do with it's keyboard? I use LinnStrument exactly because I'm not good at playing pinao-layout keyboard... But maybe I didn't google the correct word for it.
- twic 3y agoAh, not the otamatone then: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmxLja-DRIw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmxLja-DRIw
- adzm 3y agoI was expecting the otamatone as well. It's a fun little instrument to play with and lots of interesting videos of people covering songs with it.
- paganel 3y agoThey should have gone straight to playing a cimbalom, but I guess that wouldn't have been seen as cool as singing on a "new" instrument.
- MrScruff 3y agoThis kind of has the sound of someone playing an acoustic guitar patch on a keyboard. It seems to lack the expressive dynamics you would expect with a guitar, almost like the velocity is clamped.
- uxp100 3y agoIt is noise gated, which could be what you’re hearing. (This lets you play more piano like and not have to mute all those open strings)
- MrScruff 3y agoThat's probably part of it - also seems like if they're mostly doing a pressing rather than a plucking action it would result in this sound?
- HelloNurse 3y agoWhy do the strings need to be muted? Is there so much resonance that playing quickly would produce indistinct humming?
- uxp100 3y agoProbably a factor, but I think it’s more for ease of use with all those strings, so that incidental contact isn’t producing sounds, along with the pull off energy when releasing notes. You do a lot of subconscious muting when playing a guitar for example.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoIt looks like it is mostly played with hammer-ons? Maybe is someone plays it one-handed and adds a pick you get back to the guitar dynamic range. But then what's the point (may as well go with a lap steel guitar then).
- gorgoiler 3y agoBeautiful. Maybe it’s just the style of music but the example video is very reminiscent of Disasterpeace’s work: https://disasterpeace.bandcamp.com/track/nocturne https://disasterpeace.bandcamp.com/track/nocturne
- eimrine 3y agoI am surprised this thing counts as new. Finger-style playing is one of common techniques. Guitars with increased range is not something new as well.
- zimpenfish 3y agoHarry Partch must be grooving in his grave. Bit of shame he didn't live another 20 years, really, it'd be interesting to see what he could have done with more electronics and synths.
- drewcoo 3y agoPartch was into microtonal music. And created far more interesting instruments. None of this chromatically scaled stuff would be very interesting to him. Partch's instruments in case anyone's interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UZjhTlGT0o&t=672s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UZjhTlGT0o&t=672s They really have to be seen an heard.
- atentaten 3y agoVideo of Stevie Wonder playing the instrument: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQtEElCV2lY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQtEElCV2lY
- quantified 3y agoThis Bohemian Rhapsody rendition shows the experience of playing it well [https://youtu.be/Wr87Z7rZiWE https://youtu.be/Wr87Z7rZiWE]
- Jeff_Brown 3y agoI know a guy who invented something similar 20 years earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarrBoard?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarrBoard?wprov=sfla1
- Jeff_Brown 3y agoThis needs to be multiscale. The treble sounds strained and whiny, because it's at too much tension, because it's too long. The bass sounds farty and unfocused, because it's at too little tension, because it's too short. There's a good reason bass guitars are bigger than guitars. Multi-scale guitars have been out of patent for years now. And if the harpejji was invented in 2007, then I believe it should go out of patents next year? I hope the resulting competition makes them up their game.
- TylerE 3y agoI'm not sure it's even patentable in the first place. It's just a Chapman Stick with more strings.
- Jeff_Brown 3y agoThe clever part, at least the only one I know about, is that each string is muted until it gets fretted, which completes an electrical circuit to unmute it.
- routerl 3y agoThanks for that, you nailed everything that was bugging me about that timbre. Someone else mentioned the Chapman stick, and this instrument is equally disappointing.
- pgeorgi 3y ago> And if the harpejji was invented in 2007, then I believe it should go out of patents next year? Patent lifetimes are at least 20 years after the filing date as per TRIPS treaty. There's the priority mechanism for international filing, providing up to another year, and there are usually various means for additional protection time if regulations delayed the process. Those are mostly relevant for medical patents to compensate for trial-based delays, but "the PTO was too slow" seems to be reasonable ground for an extension, too. As such, we're looking at 2028. I was wondering what you could mean: in the US, before ~1997 patents used to be valid 17 years from the date of patent grant, which would fit the timeframe you mention. Grant date was usually a few years down the road and with submarine patents (keeping them in limbo by continually sending minor changes to the USPTO until it's worth having them active), that span could be extended practically infinitely. That time is, thankfully, over.
- grej 3y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20230818082739/https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/aug/16/if-stevie-wonder-wants-to-play-it-pay-attention-how-a-bizarre-new-instrument-found-unusual-success https://web.archive.org/web/20230818082739/https://www.thegu...
- franky47 3y agoI remember at NAMM about 10 years ago, the company I worked for made a touchscreen-based mixing console. The CEO insisted to have Stevie Wonder try it. What surprised me is that he (SW) looked impressed doing so, moving virtual faders on a glass screen with no tactile feedback. That was my first realization that music is a business like any other, and getting a famous person doing a PR stunt for your product may be beneficial, even though they're not at all the intended consumer. But also, SW was using his ears more than his fingers to get the feedback the product was lacking, and so what started as a bad joke made me respect him even more.
- unwind 3y agoUh in case someone doesn't know. Stevie Wonder is blind. Having him test a non-tactile instrument is non-obvious at best. Obviously he has a couple of metric tons of experience as a musician so can probably make a potato sound interesting, but still ... odd choice.
- Zuider 3y agoStevie wonder was one of the pioneers of the Fairlight Synthesizer, which was possible for him to use because it used a text interface navigated by arrow keys, rather than a fiddly GUI with unpredictable placement of drop-down menus. Arguably, a touch-screen GUI would have the same predictability (because of consistent placement of active elements) as the Fairlight text screen. In short, rather than being a tasteless joke or a stunt, it was an instrument that he could profitably use, which was demonstrated by the fact that he actually could use it.
- intrasight 3y agoI have a Linnstrument. https://www.rogerlinndesign.com/linnstrument https://www.rogerlinndesign.com/linnstrument Is open source too.
- jamesash 3y agoA childhood friend of mine invented the Lumitone, a microtonal keyboard with colored backlit hexagonal keys. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfNIxTiApig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfNIxTiApig About 10 years ago I visited him in his studio where he had all mocked up in paper and cardboard, putting all the pieces together. Fun to see it finally out and in people's hands.
- Taikonerd 3y agoIsomorphic keyboards are so cool! I hope the Lumitone comes down in price and becomes more of a "regular instrument"... AFAIK it's just as suited for regular tonal music as microtonal.
- otikik 3y ago/Lumitone/Lumatone/ It is a very fun-looking instrument. Isomorphic keyboards are an internet black hole to me. What kind of velocity-sensitive input sensors do these things use? Definitely not regular computer keyboard ones.
- kian 3y agoI've been dying to get my hands on one of these :) I think there's a pretty large and unexplored possibility space in using these MPE controllers for controlling things other music, as well...
- Taikonerd 3y agoOne cool thing about the harpejji: it's isomorphic. That means that the "shape" of a chord will be the same, everywhere on the playing surface. So, switching from playing in C major to D major just means moving your hands over one string. (Guitar and piano players know that it's more complex than that on their instruments.)
- tzs 3y agoThat could be nice when trying to learn western music theory. A long time ago I asked on a music theory forum (probably on Usenet, but maybe on Reddit) what would be the best instrument to accompany learning music theory on. The answer given was the chromatic button accordion. The buttons are in regular rows with alternating rows offset so that from any given button (except on the edges) there are 6 neighboring buttons arranged so that they are on the vertices of a hexagon. Moving diagonally through the hexagons moves in consecutive minor 2nds on one diagonal, major 2nds on another diagonal, and minor 3rds on the remaining diagonal. On the harpejji each note position you'd have 2 directions that give minor 2nds, one that gives major 2nds, and one that gives minor 3rds, so should similar to the chromatic button accordion. I wonder if in practice the offset rows of the accordion are easier or harder to deal with then the non-offset rows of the harpjji?
- Taikonerd 3y ago> But does anybody really want to play them, learn them or go and see someone else perform on them?” This is a great thing about physical instruments: it's easy to tell the relationship between what the performer does, and what sound comes out. (Like, "he hit a piano key, and the piano made one note.") I've been to electronic music concerts, and a lot of the time it's just some guy fiddling with his MacBook, and cool music is coming out of the speakers, but it's not clear what he's really doing.
- beefman 3y agoThe Harpejji is based on the StarrBoard, invented by my friend John Starrett[1][2] in the 1980s,[3] as acknowledged on the Harpejji website[4]. Not sure how the Guardian got to such lengths describing Meeks as the inventor without noticing this. Here's a photo I took of the original StarrBoard in Gainesville, FL in 1997: https://imgur.com/pilVv8b https://imgur.com/pilVv8b [1] https://starrettguitars.com/ https://starrettguitars.com/ [2] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=q2hIMZ8AAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=q2hIMZ8AAAAJ&hl=en [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarrBoard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarrBoard [4] https://www.marcodi.com/pages/about-us https://www.marcodi.com/pages/about-us
- doormatt 3y agoWhat about the Chapman Stick, which came even earlier? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapman_Stick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapman_Stick
- rfwhyte 3y ago$4500 USD to start. Wildly expensive for such a simple device.
- VerminOctopus1 3y agoYeah it’s extremely expensive. Not to mention the tones from it don’t sound far off from a crappy MIDI guitar sound.
- fuzztester 3y agoThe Hang is another relatively new instrument that has become somewhat popular in some circles. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hang_(instrument) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hang_(instrument) I got a chance to try one out recently, and played it for a bit. It was fun.
- ttctciyf 3y agoThe article links to a vulfmon track with audio and a still photo, but the video for same track on the vulf channel proper shows the instrument actually being played[1]. When I saw this a couple of months ago I had a bit of work to convince myself it was a real instrument - Stratton makes it look just too easy! Coincidentally, I found a 1976 video[2] of David Vorhaus playing his Kaleidophon around the same time which gave me the same skeptical vibe. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-ROpRnmmKE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-ROpRnmmKE 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rRNM5n3jjQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rRNM5n3jjQ
- drifkin 3y agoCory Henry playing Stevie's "Love's In Need of Love Today" is great https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL50VnZY1Kk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL50VnZY1Kk