Expressive E Touché

I’m definitely not a keyboard player. But the expressiveness that the Touché together with the Arché suite, makes possible, is actually quite nice.

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It’s a brilliant instrument. :slight_smile:

I have the Expressive E Touché midi OUT connected to Elektron 4 MKI midi IN, both connected to a USB hub and from the Hub to my computer. I run the Lié app, and when I touch the Touché it seems to work because the app is lighting the parts I touch, but there is no change of the parameters of the Elektron 4 MKI

Am I the only one bothered ( pissed, really ! ) by the lack of relative mode ?

I mean you basically have to map every preset of every synth because touché is only sending absolute values…Not to mention, time spent mapping this with a perfectible app, and small memory that basically makes it not really useable for live situation where you could want it to play tons of stuffs…

Basically, if I want to open a filter from totally closed to totally open the preset has to start its filter fully closed or, as soon as I touch the touché (!), my filter jumps to the touché absolute value.
If my preset starts fully closed and I open the filter with the touché, it works but if I want the filter to stay here, I have to lock the touché and loose my 3 other controls…

A relative mode where the cc sent offsets the phycal position of controlled parameters would make infinitely more sense…

I’m really surprised no to see this mentioned more often…Considering selling mine…

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Anyone try operating this with a foot? I’d really like to keep my hands free, so I’d like to know you can set it up to operate with your foot reasonably well, and without fatigue setting in after a few minutes.

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I feel you here but I‘m not sure how this could be implemented properly on the technical side. The controller only sends midi, how could it be relative to anything set on your synth? Are any of your midi controllers able to do such thing?

I haven’t actually tried.

But if I think of how sensitive the Touché is in relation to how precise my feet motor skills are… I wouldn’t think it’d be practical.

Also - the sensitivity means, I can’t really rest my foot on the unit without pushing out control data. So, probably fatiguing pretty soon.

This is more likely a better fit for your idea.

Effigy Labs USB/MIDI Foot Controller

Nice, but I need it for CV. The four CV outs would modulate the mix of various rack patches that respond to my The Pipe, which takes two hands to play. Currently, I use an envelope follower, but I’d like a more flexible and independent modulation source.

I don‘t really understand how this works.

In my understanding of MIDI, a synthesiser provides a list of parameters that can be changed via CC messages (filter, resonance, etc.). A controller of any kind (DAW, keyboard, etc.) can use these CC messages to send values (in the range of 0-255) in order to change the wanted parameter.

For example, if I send the value 0 to the CC assigned to the filter of my synth, it will close the filter. If I send 255 the filter will be fully open.

Now in order to send relative or incremental changes to the filter, I would need to

  1. know the current value of the filter position and increment/decrement it on the controller side
  2. send special MIDI command in order to say something like “increment the value by +5”

Their is not a standard message for reading parameters of a MIDI device, you can’t say "hey MIDI device on channel 6, give me the current value for CC 124". So 1. is not something feasible.

Also, MIDI being the standard for the last 50 years, 2. is not something that would work out of the box between synths and controllers of different brands (because there is no specification for this kind of communication).

Now with DAWs, VST controllable synths and some scripting environment you might be able to achieve something similar but I don’t know how the touché or any other controller could implement such a thing in a MIDI/CV standard way…

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Their post-

So Max would be controlling the state. They’re confusing the software with the protocol.

I don’t even think that Max or any MIDI scripting engine could work this out.

How is the engine going to know that you changed the value of a parameter when using a different patch for example. The synthesiser is not going to send the entire state of CC parameters via MIDI when switching patches.

Now VSTs (Overbridge, Moog Minitaur, etc.) achieve this over USB but every company is using it own communication protocol.

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Nothing mentioned about “relative mode” so perhaps he is reading in here.

Or it’s referring to the state of the device knob with the Max patch, not the synth itself.

I m confusing nothing. Midi can send and receive all the datas needed. How you use those datas is up to you. Google bome box midi absolute to relative . See how this is handled.
My goliath add its value to my knobs values in two ways. See where it is mentionned warp mode.
I had a long mail exchange with expressive support and they acknowledged that this could be implemented. So, no, they are not confusing anything here.

Not trying to be annoying here. I‘m just geniusly interested how this could work.

I‘m not aware of any specification for sending CC parameter values other than absolute (0-255). What other kind of messages/data are you referring too?

You define start point (CC value 255), endpoint (CC value 0) and the curve fun (linear, expo, custom). Now when you press the Touché, it will send values from 255 to 0 depending how hard you press. Is this not what you want? Sometimes you want the filter to open when pressing but sometimes you might want to close the filter when pressing. Right?

You mean the position of the knob on your synth? Or the depth of the touché pressure point?

Maybe we are not talking about the same thing here. The annoying thing for me is working with different synth patches while using a single preset on the Touché. Say I want to control filter FREQ and RESONANCE the same way on different patches. Or even be able to turn FREQ and RESONANCE simultaneously. I would like the touché to send offset of the current params on the synth but I don‘t think that it is technically feasible.

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Sorry but I’m not midi guru or genuine programmer. So I won’t be able to go in a perfect explanation. See the bome box video. The script is clear and works. I have it working in front of me right now.

If I have to go to the simplest possible route, I could always setup a midi chain where a knob send cc, is received by a controller which then add its value and send back the data. I can test the result to see if I have to process again or not. No fancy special midi data needed.

Right, it’s not actually supported in MIDI spec.

Your DAW is what receives these relative changes to map and sent out to your synth as absolute values, check out 27.2.4 Mapping to Relative MIDI Controllers.

I’m fairly certain that it’d be a requirement for any “endless” encoder, and it makes less sense in implementation to include relative values for the Touche which has a limited travel and is easier to track and bound the absolute value of than a knob without any stopping points.

That relative incrementation of the Goliath is required by design of the encoder but does not appear to be any special “mode”.

Is this nitpicky? Absoutely!

It was a good opportunity for me to look up what you were talking about and understand my hardware and the ecosystem a bit better :slight_smile:

There’s a valid conceptual difference between the method of input, whereas a free turning encoder has no default state the Touche will return itself to its calibrated zero through mechanical means, there’s no need to push relative values. So even If there was a physical “hold” or it had no spring-back, there would still be physical bounds of travel.

Considering the mouse-like design of the Touche, i wonder if you might be looking for a combination of a trackball and max patch for those needs? I’m sure someone’s coded that up already and through scale of industry it’d be a $30 instead of $300 2 axis input device.

According to the company, operating it with the foot would be a substantial challenge. I did intend to operate it like a “foot painter” as they say, but I’m still skeptical how successful I could be with it. Perhaps I’ll try it someday because it’s possible to play The Pipe one-handed, leaving the other one free for fine-tuned Expressive manipulation. But after a few minutes (maybe longer if you have a big hand), The Pipe becomes too fatiguing to support with just one hand.

Their message to me:

"We don’t recommend using your feet to control Touché. Although the unit itself is pretty durable, there are several reasons for this

  • the touch-plate is only held magnetically and might be displaced when stepping on it
  • the mechanism is meant to already move when only slight pressure is applied. This is true for lateral movements as well. Even though you can adjust the stiffness of the lateral movement, it will easily give way to the weight that is expected when you step on it.
  • the Touché’s sensors are very reactive, so that you probably won’t be able to get the most out of it, unless you are foot painter :wink:

That doesn’t mean that you theoretically couldn’t get great results if you take care, perhaps sitting and using it without your shoes on, but we unfortunately can’t offer support for a Touché that has been regularly stepped upon, taking into account the normal beatings and dirt that a guitarists stomp box rig has to swallow."

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Yeah, it’s really meant for subtle changes, there are already foot pedals you can grab for CV and MIDI. A hard enough nudge and the top pops off.

I’d need four expression pedals to get the same control. I’m thinking about doing that, but it would take up a lot of space,.