I think they are essentially just using induction/magnetism to vibrate the tines, so no moving things other than the vibration of the tine so sadly you would need to find something those little inductor things could vibrate with magnetic forces.
Something about this device does kinda yell minimum viable product to me, hopefully like a 3 octaves version exists at some point and we see like a jazz musician playing it live. There was a company called deagan that was experimenting with this sort of stuff in the 70s and everything they made was like a full instrument. Granted you’re gonna drop like 3-5k on a full sized electro acoustic thing but it certainly would go from something really cool to something awe inspiring
Oh I don’t make videos, but also I don’t own a phase 8 (or a polyend mess for that matter) and any comparison would have to be side by side to be fair. Maybe there’s something truly outstanding about this, I just don’t see it yet.
Yeah that’s one although the impulse for a Rhodes is a physical action from the key, similarly a Wurlitzer works electro acoustically but yeah a bit different tech still . The old deagan stuff had a mix of things although some used little servos to strike stuff… but yeah they also did vibraphones which is I guess where I drew the parallel.
It reminds me of a gangsa, and the way you can sequence it of the gamalan music with detuned notes played by 2 players on 2 instruments, or something of Steve reich where phrases drift in and out of phase through different lengths of the pattern.
Ah, good. (I figured it was an autocorrect, but could not figure out of what.)
I honestly do not understand why people cannot accept that this is a limited release, tolerated by the company because the developer has a good history, that offers something new and yet is inherently restricted in scope. No, it cannot be approximated well by an NTS-1. No, it is not a gamechanger that will be a future modern classic. It is a small, intriguing device, certainly not for everyone even at half the price. Just let it be what it is, and rejoice that such releases are still possible in this mercenary age.
The Hydrasynth (and I assume Leviathan) has metal/rubber knobs that feel amazing. I didn’t think about this before buying but dialing in sounds is physically pleasurable, they have some kind of weight under your fingers that makes fine adjustments feel extremely responsive. I’m sure this is also in part some careful calibration of the knob/encoder ballistics.
Seeing the demos I think people are underestimating the capabilities of the Phase 8. This is an acoustic instrument. I can see using a bow on the resonators, making wood resonators (with metal), or experimenting with tons of random artifacts to create an endless array of sounds. And these are sounds that are tactile that can be manipulated in multiple dimensions to alter the sound. I also love have each can have an individual velocity and envelope. And I want to reiterate what I noted above, but new resonators can make this a completely new instrument.
But does it have MPE or can I parameterlock something? How many grains does it’s engine support simultaneously?
It’s strengths are less overlapping with the usual feature and workflow focused talk in the sphere it’s demonstrated in. I do hope it gets it’s audience.
It’s more in line with esoteric synths that usually get ignored by the broad masses, but here it’s KORG and the creator of the volcas, so a certain attention is given.
Well it has physical polyphonic expression, ya know the thing that MPE tries to emulate. Is this really a missing feature that warrants docking points?
That’s part of the joke, mpe got hyped up and is always a point, but if an instrument can do that naturally suddenly it’s not of interest and you can achieve it with sampling to. (Paraphrasing and simplifying, but you get the point)
The social media Gas Gear audience is the wrong one for this device. I appreciate loopop, great work in explaining stuff. But the actual musical expression was never his strength in those videos (not that it was bad, enough to get the devices across, except in this case maybe), this one needs more performance focus, less feature focus. And a lot of his audience will disregard it from that end because they are feature focused.
