Musiq Electroniq

www.AdventurousMuseStore.com Online Music Store is Open for Business

The Adventurous Muse Online Store (www.AdventurousMuseStore.com) aims to be the most interesting musical instrument store in the universe! Acoustic, electric and electronic musical instruments, ranging from innovative to beyond your dreams. The Adventurous Muse venture (www.AdventurousMuse.com) was created to expand our focus beyond violins and fiddles to other types of musical instruments.

The Adventurous Muse, owned by Don Rickert Design, is for the adventurous musicians of the world for whom having the most innovative instruments for pursuing their art is a high priority and who possess and are not afraid to spend the necessary money to obtain them. They are committed to restoring the U.S. economy by supporting small businesses (by buying stuff).

What is the Idea Behind Musiq Electroniq(tm)

In the course of inventing and designing groundbreaking acoustic bowed string instruments (violins, fiddles and related instruments), Don Rickert of Rickert & Ringholz Musical Instruments has dreamed up all sorts of electronic music products that do not quite fit into the product portfolio of an acoustic musical instrument company.

Some of these product ideas are actually geared towards live performance of what might be called the Alternative Folk genre. Others are geared towards other genres, such as jazz, rock and hip-hop. The two threads that run through everything that Musiq Electroniq(tm) brings to the market is they will be electronic and musical in nature.

Browsing through the products we have on the drawing board will hopefully make Musiq Electroniq's reason for being clear.

Alternative Folk, bowed string, Don Rickert, electronic, fiddles, hip-hop, jazz, live performance, musical, musical instruments, Musiq Electroniq, Rickert & Ringholz, rock, violins

Pics of The Don Rickert-Designed Violin Synth Prototype 3

And a little commentary as well...

Here are photos from every possible angle of the new prototype. I am not going to tell you what the string sensing technology is, so you will have to ponder it based on the form factor of the "bridge." What you can easily see is that the actually strings are used on this prototype not only for fingerboard position sensing but for the bowing sensing as well. ALL wiring is concealed and the wireless technology is inside the instrument. There are no external controls on the instrument at this time, so the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) controls are necessary right now. After some more design research, we will figure out the physical controls that should be on the instrument and what form they should take (e.g. buttons, sliders, knobs, pads, etc.)

The prototype pics do not represent the final final form of the synthesizer, but it is getting close. The next prototype iteration will have a neck angle adjustment feature and a MUCH less obtrusive tuning "thing" (for lack of a better term) that sits where the tailpiece would normally be. Like Professor Dan Overton's (of Aalborg University in Denmark http://media.aau.dk/) "Overtone Violin", we will be using knob type tuners like those manufactured by Steinberger for electirc guitars.

A "Conventional" Electric Violin Spinoff

Also, The basic form factor (the the changes mentioned above) will be the platform for a state-of-the-art electric violin, to be available in a conventionally tuned version and a version optimized for use as a baritone (octave) violin.

The Photos

The woods used are hard maple (some of it "ebonized"), spruce (all of it ebonized) and high-quality Baltic Birch plywood, finished with clear buffed nitrocellulose lacquer (i.e. guitar finish) over amber stain mixed according to Don Rickert's secret recipe...final coat of carnuaba wax. The body is "chambered", meaning essentially a solid body with large chambers to accommodate the various electronics, including several I-CubeX MIDI controllers and a wireless transmitter/reciever.

Click on any of the thumbnails for full-size views.

 

baritone, bowing, bridge, controls, Dan Overton, DAW, Don Rickert, fingerboard, I-CubeX, MIDI, octave, Overtone Violine, positions, prototype, Rickert, sensing, Steinberger, synthesizer, tuning, wireless, wireless

One Really Expensive Junk Pile!

Pictured here is a pile of the various bowing surfaces we have designed and built for use on our Violin Synthesizer in development. I am not going to say much about them, as there is at least a little bit of technology in each that we might use for something in the future. NONE of these bowing surfaces have passed my test for acceptability, the most important criterion being that an expert string player be able to use their bowing expression skills unencumbered by the technology. All are based on technologies to accurately sense bowing pressure and speed (i.e. attack) with physical sensors.

Adding up the development hours, this is at least a $50,000 pile of junk. Natural inventors take this in stride, often with the motto, "fail early and fail often."

Anyway, we have given up on vibration and pressure-sensing sensors for the time being for the bowing surface. What could be next? The knowledgeable among you will be able to tell in the series of photos in the next posting that we are using something else altogether to sense which string or strings are being bowed and the "dynamics" of this bowing.

Don Rickert

attack, bowing, bowing expression, dynamics, physical, pressure, sensors, surface, synthesizer, technologies, technology, vibration, violin

A lot of people inventing, making and doing cool things with new synthesizers

In our search for answers to the extremely vexing issues associated with designing a bridge for a violin synthesizer (you would think it would be easy, but it ain't), we spread the net wide and discovered a lot of others doing wacky, wonderful and all-around cool things for post-keyboard synthesizers (nothing at all wrong with keyboards).

We intend to add a page of links to these synthesizer god and goddesses really soon. In fact we really need to talk to some of them about selling their instruments through an online store associated with this site that we plan to add in the future...not sure how near...depends on the standoff between us (and all other small businesses) and our customers (of our state-of-the-art acoustic instruments via www.fiddleandbowstore.com) and our consulting clients (mostly design research) on the the major issue of buying stuff and services. That fear and abandonment of logic thing that people get during hard economic times is a hard nut to crack! (but I digress, as I am given to doing).

bridge, fear, logic, post-keyboard, synthesizer, violin

Just Might Have Some Initial Photos of Our Violin Synth Prototype 3

I know, we have been promising a glimpse at what is looking like a close-to-production violin synthesizer for a while. As with everything, things take longer than hoped or expected. I can tell you that we have designed and made working models of 4 different bowing surfaces that DO NOT work the way we want them to. Don't know if we are going to show them, as we might patent them anyway.

We discovered along the way, that we may have two new instruments based on the same physical instrument, just with really different electronics...Remember, that Dr. Don Rickert, a Professional Industrial Designer (as close as the ID profession has to licensing) is a human factors/ergonomics expert, especially in the musical instruments domain.

1. A REALLY playable, nice sounding and beautiful state-of-the-art "conventional" electric violin
2. A violin type synthesizer that looks superficially the same as the electric violin, but totally sensor-driven with its own pickup system.

More on this two new instrument "aha!" in future postings.

Dr. Don Rickert, electric, electronics, ergonomics, Human factors, instruments, musical, photos, pickup, Professional Industrial Designer, synthesizer, violin

Rickert Violin Synthesizer Prototype 3 Almost Ready for Demonstration

After spending a week on an electro-mechanical bowing surface contraption, we decided to go back to using the strings themselves as a bowing surface. This might seem like the obvious thing to do, but it is actually much more complicated technically to use regular violin strings as a bowing surface, at least with our technical design, because with a true violin synthesizer (not merely a MIDI-compatible electric violin), the strings are simply sensors...actual part of a multi-part sensor. Transforming the output of any new kind of sensor to something that can be understood by the MIDI processor part of the synthesizer is always easier imagined than done.

Anyway, we are still using sound synthesis system on Ableton Live as the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation software) also running Tension, which is an Ableton Live add-on. We will have demo videos of the next prototype pretty soon.

Abelton, DAW, demo, Live, prototype, Rickert, synthesizer, Tension, videos, violin

Why Are We Doing This? Doesn't Zeta, Roland and Others Already Have a Violin Synth?

Good question and the answer to the second part is that the big names do have products that will convert audio signals from an electric violin that has the right kind of (expensive) pickup and then do the audio to MIDI conversion. Well, yes they certainly do (but have you ever seen anybody use one?). That audio analysis takes the latency (milliseconds) from the time a player's bow touches the string to a level that is quite noticeable to the player.

There you have it...from a Human Factors/Ergonomics perspective, their systems don't work. Once your latency reaches anything over 10 or so milliseconds, it's not a usable system.

What we are building uses sensors on the instrument itself to generate the necessary MIDI codes. We are working towards 5 second or less TOTAL latency. Once our system is functional, we shall know whether we have achieved that goal (but we have some really good Ph.D. level Electrical Engineers on this issue and believe that we will meet our goal), we will be able to say that ours works and theirs doesn't. We'll see how it turns out.

Differences Between an Electric Violin, a "MIDI Capable" Violin and a True Violin Synthesizer

A number of questions are often asked about the difference between an electric violin, a so-called "MIDI capable" electric violin and a Violin Synthesizer. While the question is a good one, the differences between the three are significant.

Electric Violins

Electric violin is a large category that includes at least three major sub-categories:

1. solid body instruments
2. chambered (semi-hollow)
3. acoustic violins with the right pickups installed

Each of the three types of electric violin are, of course, played through an amplifier and have their own kind of distinctive sound, which is a player preference matter. Each of the three types rely on some type of transducer to convert vibrations from either the bridge or the top of the instrument (or both) to an audio signal, which is sent to an amplifier, either via a cable or some type of wireless transmission technology. The signal may, and usually does, go through a pre-amp first, either built into the instrument, or in the form of an effects box on the floor. The purpose of the pre-amp is to boost the signal and/or match it optimally with the amplifier. An electric violin without pre-amping usually sounds thin and weak...in fact, horrible at best!

The type of pickup used is amazingly similar on all three types of electric violin...a piezo electric element that responds to bridge movements is by far the most common type of pickup used. These are placed somewhere on the bridge. There are pickups that respond to movement of the top of the instrument. These are generally placed under the bridge feet. Such a pickup is generally used for acoustic violins; however, I have have seen them on chambered-body and even solid-bodied instruments.

There are other kinds of pickups that rely on things like magnetic resonance, but their use is not common and they are very expensive.

With the right kind of equalization controls (yet another piece of equipment) and other types of "exciter" boxes, one can get something like a natural, but louder sound out of an acoustic violin. Chambered and solid body violins generally sound like, well, electric violins, with some exceptions...very expensive solid or chambered instruments specifically designed to give a pretty natural-sounding acoustic sound are made.

There is much more that could be said about electric violins, but the bottom line is that they are in no way synthesizers, unless, of course, they are special electric violins referred to often as "MIDI capable." Then, there is an argument to be had about whether or not they are synthesizers.

"MIDI-Capable" Electric Violins:

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and is the standard system of codes used for making one piece of synthesizer equipment communicate and send control messages (i.e. play this note) to another piece of synthesizer equipment. The big name in MIDI-capable bowed instruments is Zeta, who also makes the necessary electronic equipment for converting audio signals from a violin pickup to a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), generally special software running on a computer.

At the risk of over-simplifying, MIDI-Capable means that the instrument (an electric violin) is designed in such a way that there is absolute acoustic separation between each string. A MIDI-capable violin might have 10 separate transducers installed on a very special bridge. The problem with MIDI-capable instruments is the considerable lag time (enough milliseconds that it is noticed by the player) involved in converting the violin's audio signals to MIDI commands, which are then further processed by the DAW software on the computer, one type of which is illustrated in the photo of Ableton Live with the Tension instrument acoustics modeling system add-on shown (click on the image for a larger view.).

• True Violin Synthesizer/MIDI Control Surface: There are none on the market yet; however, Don Rickert Research & Design and a firm called Visual Strings are both independently working on such an instrument. There will be more on the Violin Synth in other postings and demonstrations of prototypes can be seen and heard in videos on this site. For now, you can view the posting entitled:

control surface, Don Rickert, electric violin, Fiddarci Lutherie, fiddle, Maggini, MIDI, octave, purpose-built, violin

Video Demos of Rickert Violin Synthesizer Prototype 2

Note: This second prototype demo, a combination of stuff that really works and simulation just like the first, uses a really nice sound synthesis system on the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation software), Tension, which is an Ableton Live add-on. We will have videos of the next prototype in several weeks.

Video Demos of Rickert Violin Synthesizer 1

Note: This first prototype demo, a combination of stuff that really works and simulation, uses enhanced standard MIDI sounds, which are not that great, especially on the higher pitched stuff. Native MIDI does great with organ and piano, however. The sound synthesis is MUCH better in the demos of the second prototype.

demos, MIDI, prototype, Rickert, simulation, synthesizer, violin