MARK SMART: Hi. My name is Mark Smart. This is the Continuum Fingerboard. It was invented by Lippold Haken. It’s a continuous music controller. It's continuous in three different directions. You can use it to control either an analog synth or a digital synth via MIDI. You can use it either polyphonically or monophonically. Right now, it's set up so that the top half of the keyboard is controlling this ARP Axxe here through the control voltage interface, and the bottom half of the keyboard, through MIDI, is controlling Reaktor software synth which is running on this Open Labs Neko over here.

So, on the analog side, what I'm doing here is the pressure of the node is controlling the volume of the sound.

[MARK SMART PLAYING A NOTE ON THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

Left to right directin is controlling the pitch...

[MARK SMART PLAYING A GLISSANDO ON THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

...which is continuous. You can do slides and vibrato.

[MARK SMART PLAYING THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

And then also you can set it up so that the front-back position is controlling a different parameter like I can do filter cutoff...

[MARK SMART PLAYING THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

...so the filter is now sweeping as I play it higher up here.

[MARK SMART PLAYING THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

So, you can use those voltages for whatever you want. So, the top half, since it's monophonic, what it does is it chooses whichever note you're pushing down the hardest if you're pushing down multiple notes, so you can sort of roll your fingers and get kind of nice legato thing.

[MARK SMART PLAYING THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

So, that's a legato transition. You can control the different types of transitions. So that's legato.

[MARK SMART PLAYING THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

It only attacks in the beginning. You can put it in a different mode and it will retrigger. Every time you change notes it will re-attack.

[MARK SMART PLAYING THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

So it's nice for that percussive sounding stuff. There's a third called portamento. In addition to being able to portamento by sliding...

[MARK SMART PLAYING THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

...you can also use this other mode and it will slide between the two notes that you're playing depending on the relative pressure of the two notes.

[MARK SMART PLAYING THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

So, it's good if you want to slide quickly and then suddenly stop on the note and have it be in tune.

[MARK SMART PLAYING THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

It's good for making whammy bar sounds.

[MARK SMART PLAYING THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

So, that's the top half. On the bottom half, it's set up to be polyphonic. It's controlling through MIDI. It's controlling Reaktor over here. Each note is sent on a separate channel so that you can bend all the notes individually and control the brightness and volume, so...

[MARK SMART PLAYING REAKTOR USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

...if I play a chord here, I can control volume of each individual note separately from the others with pressure or I can then bend the pitch without bending the others.

[MARK SMART PLAYING REAKTOR USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

Or I can sweep the filter of one note without sweeping the others.

[MARK SMART PLAYING REAKTOR USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

So, many possibilities. One thing that I like to do is use Reaktor and put the whole thing in monophonic mode and sort of do a kind of a pseudo-saxophone. I'm going to set it here so that --

[MARK SMART PLAYING REAKTOR USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

This is Reaktor. I have sort of a pseudo-sax. It's sort of built out of analog-style building blocks but what happens is when you push it down hard, you get a louder and a brighter sound.

[MARK SMART PLAYING REAKTOR USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

And then according to, if you play up here, you get sort of a saxophone growl...

[MARK SMART PLAYING REAKTOR USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

...and add an additional dimension. So, between the vibrato, the legato, and everything, you can get a pretty expressive wind instrument.

[MARK SMART PLAYING REAKTOR USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

So I think this is -- I play saxophone and MIDI link controller, and I think this is just as expressive as that except that it adds one more dimension to it and it can be polyphonic, so lots of possibilities.

So, when you have it split like this, some interesting things you can do are put a lead sound up here analog and then a sustained sound down here. So, this is kind of an Indian sounding thing. At the bottom, I'm playing a sort of a drone sound with Reaktor, and I have a pedal down here that's doing a sostenuto function. If you rock the pedal forward, it will sustain whatever note it was that you're playing, and then as you rock the pedal back, you can control the volume of that note.

[MARK SMART PLAYING REAKTOR AND THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

So, another new addition that's kind of interesting to the Continuum is the ability to do alternate tunings. First, actually I'm just playing the rounding modes. There's a couple of rounding modes in place that make it easier to play notes in two like if you -- There's one turned on right now called round initial pitch. If you hit that, if you hit the note it will round it to the nearest half step and then after that you can bend it slightly away from it.

[MARK SMART PLAYING REAKTOR AND THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

So that makes it all a lot more possible to hit chords in tune and to do things like that. If you're really hardcore, you can turn this off and then it becomes like attempting to play a polyphonic violin which is very difficult, so I usually like that on. In addition to that, there's another function called round rate which Jordan Rudess from Dream Theater asked for. With this function, if you play a chord and then if you slide it up and you don't hit it exactly right, it will slowly round it toward the right pitch, so that's very useful for sliding chords.

[MARK SMART PLAYING REAKTOR AND THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

So, because the rounding is there, it's nice to be able to round to things other than regular 12-tone equal temperament. So, for this sort of Indian-sounding stuff, it's good to have just intonation, so I'm going to put it in just intonation in the key of Db.

[MARK SMART PLAYING REAKTOR AND THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

So, the 7th there is flat a little it so it's more in tune.

[MARK SMART PLAYING REAKTOR AND THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

The portamento is really good for doing sort of ornaments and stuff.

[MARK SMART PLAYING REAKTOR AND THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

So, the just intonation thing is fun to mess around with. Now I'm going to put it back into regular tuning. The other thing that I like to do with it is sort of prog rock style stuff, so I'm going to set the Axxe up here for a -- I should explain what this synthesizer is. This is the ARP Axxe from 1975 that I have thoroughly modified by drilling all kinds of holes in it and adding patch points so that it works with the control voltage interface better.

[MARK SMART PLAYING THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

So, now I'm going to put the bottom part into poly mode again, mono interval off, and then change to my patch where I have a sustained sound down here and a lead up here.

[MARK SMART PLAYING REAKTOR AND THE ARP AXXE USING THE HAKEN CONTINUUM FINGERBOARD]

So there it is. That's the Continuum Fingerboard, and thank you.