Hats off to friend Christophe @Anckorage, showing “all-the-package”! amazing…
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Thanks a lot Antonio !
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That does look great.
Not thrilled to learn that the feature is patented.
(I have a few apps I can’t release now.)
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Read the patent, in Europe ideas are not patentable and software usually also not. If you published that idea somehow (on a public forum for example) before they applied for the patent you could even question it…
Easiest would be to talk to Expressiveé and see if they would allow you to use your implementation anyway…
I guess the patent is just for the hardware implementation… And its a great way to get around that inherent limitation of a keyboard…
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yeah, I highly doubt this would be enforceable in any meaningful way…
I never knew this existed as an idea, but ages ago Id considered a similar idea with the eigenharp,
where the pressure of the next key would determine how fast the slide to it was. (*)
of course, from the video above, Im sure the Continuum/Osmose is doing something more clever/involved (ive not read the patent to see exactly what it does) .
however, the point is… the general idea that pressure some how affects portamento speed is something others could quite reasonable come up with independently.
(*) background.
the reason I considered this is quite simple.
the Eigenharp is a bunch of keys, so you cannot do continuous slide between notes,
so I figured, why not portamento between notes… then I realised, hmm, a fixed speed wouldn’t be like, I could do with the soundplane… so I started thinking about velocity and pressure (on the new note) as a way to control that speed.
amusingly, of course, Im sure this is exactly the same driver behind the Osmose use-case.
as its discrete keys, how do you do slides…
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Yeah, the patent is simply said: Given a number of pitches and weights, calculate a new pitch by taking a weighted average.
Haken has one other patent about pitch correction which is just as obvious. I’m not sure how the Linnstrument or GeoShred implement it, but it feels pretty similar.
Probably it helps with sales to say that a product has some patented technology 
If it were simply portamento speed, basing that on velocity would be enough.
It’s a step further, in that you can also revert back to your original pitch, at a configurable speed (so, your controller would have to also output release velocity).
Thing is, it’s not strictly a gliding portamento deal at all. The movement is arbitrary and bidirectional, and could sit indefinitely in the space between pitches, if that’s how you articulate it.
ive not read the spec, but the way I imagined it was quite simple…
the two notes (high/low) pressures can be imagined like a see-saw, the more pressure you apply on one side , the more/faster its slides that way - thats what I meant by controlling portamento speed, its changing the delta you have in portamento. (positive or negative e.g. P1 - P2, though it’ll be scaled probably against a log curve or similar )
again… this is not hard to imagine… its fairly logical idea when you have poly pressure, you decide you want to slide between discrete notes.
thats not taking anything away from the idea, it is a really cool and useful feature.
of course, its drawback - is often we have pressure assigned to something else - at which point you are mixing its usage … but given limitations of hardware (*) , its a nice option.
(*) thats kind of why im surprised it was originally created for the Continuum, where it seems less useful since you can already slide - so why sacrifice pressure?
but obviously for the Eigenharp, I did not have that choice - and its similar on the Osmose.
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They’re not “sacrificing” pressure, at least according to the patent. The pitch of the composite note is based on a pressure-weighted average of the pitches of the touches, and the composite pressure is simply the maximum pressure of those touches. (Which is about what I expected before I looked at the patent – see figure 4 therein.)
ah that makes sense…so the P1-P2 = portamento speed, but P1(2) / (P1+P2) = pressure.
it’ll be interesting to see how easy that is to get consistent pressure on the other (pressure) parameter. I guess it should be ok, since at both extremes, you get the individual pressure.
the skill therefore is learning to transfer your weight from N1 to N2 in a balanced way.
imagine an example where you want to slide from N1 to N2, but you want to N2 to be quieter (pressure → vca) , you have to control the relative weight of N1/N2 to slide, but also gradually reduce the total weight to as you get to N2. Im intrigued to try this and see how natural it is.
(this is obviously completely trivial to do on a continuous surface)
I do think its a great feature for the Osmose, and look forward to trying it
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Yeah. Osmose seems uniquely well suited towards facilitating that.
(You want a fair amount of plunge distance, on top of the resistance.)
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And deliveries now promised to start in September.
possibly, its says shipping by sea from China in September …
I suspect few of us will see it before October, even on this timescale.
… and given repeated dates and delays, frankly, I’ll be happy to see it this year.
BUT, ExpressiveE are not alone, lots of manufactures are having delays and issues.
so I just hope that ExpressiveE (as a company/employees) can weather these delays too.
as for the Osmose, Im sure it’s going to be worth the wait.
btw: the UI/Display is looking good… I think this is the first video where we have seen it close up.
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Yep, really nice! video with Christophe was already showing it …
This time we got to see the “sliders” mentioned and in action. (Modslider)
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yeah, its got a feeling now of being ‘polished’ - simple things like sliding animations as they change page.
I guess, the one advantage of hardware delays, is they had a lot of extra time to work on the firmware.
… so we will be getting something more like a v1.1 on release rather than v1.0.
( I just hope they’ve had enough pre-production units for testers/qa, as ultimately lots of (daily) testing/playing is the only real way to mature a product)
anyway… feels like we are getting closer.
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Still true. And sadly, more accurate with today’s newsletter updating the shipping timeline…
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I’ll be quite surprised if we get to see our Osmose before the new year.
bizarre thing… back in 2019, I thought I could pre-order, but see it ‘in person’ at superbooth 2020
… now we are 2021, and it looks like I’ll likely see it before delivery/final payment at the delayed superbooth 2021!
who would have guessed this 2 years ago !
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I’m fortunate enough to be at Superbooth, and had a session with the Osmose 
Overall impression is it’s lovely, a quality instrument that’s well built. The touch is fantastic, the first pressure has a great feel perfect for non-percussive sounds ( say wind), and the second touch is nicely differentiated.
The Eagan matrix is, of course, fantastic - and the ability to alter parameters on the Osmose display is great.
It’s going to take a little getting used to the pitchbend ( not entirely surprising).
Can’t wait to get it, definitely will have been worth the wait !
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Oh just that word…
Happy you got to try it; oh the adrenaline of the “close encounter”… hehh
Reverse time, Its closer each passing day… or something…
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