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Looper's Delight
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"My overall experience suggested that it was designed 'down' for easy accessibility and instant 'look Ma! I'm playing techno!' gratification, rather than trying to break new ground or really excite developed musicians." I find this true of virtually every Roland product. :) "2. Sounds and fx. a. This is the unit's biggest let down. Was it just me, or did there seem to be more >melodic< instruments than drum sets? If I wanted to play the xylophone, I'd get a piano keyboard! The melodic instruments were less responsive to controller changes than for example the talking drums or tabla, and most of them were crap. What filler." I am still trying to sort out which sounds, if any, are physically modeled and which are samples. There is no mention of COSM or physical modeling anywhere in the manual or the advertisements I have seen for the Handsonic. Can _all_ the sounds be programmed to respond to positional sensing, pressure, muting, etc. or just some of them? I'm still researching this when I have the time. "The african talking drums (change the pitch with the light beam controller), tabla (mutable; play with your fingertips) and other ethnic instruments were very fun to play, but the dozens of electronic drum emulations and 'techno' patches, with synth stabs and other early 90s pablisms got old really, really fast. Sure, you could always add your own sound module, but that would involve tons of programming to get the sounds to play right, and also lugging around tons of crap to play it. I don't have the time, and for a grand, I'd want someone to do a halfway decent job for me already." The only module I am thinking of adding right now is the Emu Xtreme Lead or Proteus 2000 as these modules have global microtonal tuning tables, decent scale resolution, and are not too expensive. "The worst part was the fact that no serious programming had been put into creating new sounds just for this instrument. This is absolute sacrilege." I suspect _all_ the sounds are sample-based (no physical modeling) and the editing facilities are limited. "b. The effects were likewise tame, nothing interesting or even very useful in shaping the sound.. No resonant filters, which the instrument was practically crying out for. What's up with that? I'm supposed to get excited over a reverse reverb? Hey! It's not the eighties any more!" I thought there is programmable filter resonance, but as part of the sound editing architecture rather than the effects section. I remember reading it in the "Editing sounds" section of the manual. "b. The midi implementation, as far as I could see, was adequate. It had local off, which was my main concern, and" The manual seems to indicate that it transmits polyphonic aftertouch, a feature you can't even find on 99% of the keyboard controllers out there. This is definitely one area I need to investigate further. "b. The 'loop' section was a good step in the right direction, allowing you to create loops and then assign them to pads for triggering on the fly. However, the creation wasn't something you could do easily on the stage, more of a set up presets and then play over them kind of thing. Hey! I can already do that with a cd player..." You can also do that with a cheap phrase sampler. :) I get your point, though. I figure if I want to do live looping with it, I either have to use an audio looper (which I do plan to do) or the internal sequencer. Using the audio looper and the sequencer together could be messy. Or maybe I could just trigger a sequence, loop that with the audio looper, turn off the sequence, play "live" and loop that, etc. I'm sure there's a workaround somewhere... "c. The knob controllers were a pain to use - they seemed more designed for tweaking patches, than on the fly performance. The ribbon controllers seem under utilized in the factory patches, and I didn't have time to program them." I agree in that I've only used the knobs to try to adjust the pitch of the Indonesian gongs to get a more authentic pelog or slendro tuning. The extra controllers (ribbons, D-beam) in general are underutilized. For example, for one preset the D-Beam triggers a loud gong no matter what hand motion I use. It _can_ be set up to respond more dynamically to hand speed and distance, but it more often than not is not set up that way in the presets. I only found one preset where the D-Beam actually varied in response to my hand position for a Theremin-like effect. "All in all, it was OK. I'm itching to get one, just because it's the only game in town and I need to learn to drum and to perform my own drum parts, but it's definitely marketed to the kiddy crowd, and I know it would proably be a waste, even though it >so< close to what would excite me, and many other users." The Handsonic is not perfect, but I have no regrets in my impulse buy of the display unit at the store. I saw it as a lower cost alternative to the Zendrum, an admittedly cool-looking $1400+ retail unit which probably has better MIDI implementation, but no built in sounds, D-beam, ribbons, internal sequencer (which _does_ support odd-time signatures, thank the Lord), etc. and no aftertouch. There are folks like Ikue Mori doing some amazing, creative stuff with lesser quality devices like Ikue's home-made drum machine controller - I'd love to hear her get her hands on a Handsonic. Paolo _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.