This is something for you if you are sick of claviature.

“Designed by Dr. Lippold Haken and manufactured by Haken Audio, the Continuum Fingerboard is a Midi performance controller that allows unprecedented realtime musical control. With a greater pitch range than a traditional 88 note Midi keyboard, the Continuum offers realtime continuous control in three directions for every finger that is placed on the playing surface. Included internally is a custom designed synthesizer, specifically programmed to take advantage of the subtle and dramatic expressive musical possibilities of the Continuum. The Continuum is available in full-size (nearly 8 octaves) and half-size (nearly 4 octaves) versions.”  www.hakenaudio.com

Jean Michel Jarre uses one and I also heard that Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater is a fan of these controllers. A full size continuum costs $ 5290 and a half sized $ 3390. In the clips below you get a demo from Schneiders Beuro in Berlin by Jan-Hinnerk Helms.

The Haken Continuum Controller - Part 1 from niamhguckian on Vimeo.

The Haken Continuum Controller - Part 2 from niamhguckian on Vimeo.

The second clip at about 55 seks is really fun

I felt a bit bad about dissing classical music on synths in a recent post. I didn't mean to say that the guy who made the track, Syntesen, was bad. I think he is a great musician, it's just that I don't like the "recreating classical music with synths"-genre that much. But Syntesen is appearently quite into the "recreating synth music with synths"-genre as well. He did this version of Jarre's Chronologie 6 in no more than 30 minutes!!

Youtube via Syntesen

I'd like to think that this is what Jarre sees when he's on LSD (I'm not saying that he is)

Synth blog tip#1: Mention Jean Michel Jarre in a post and you'll get more views. Sad but true.

After some really good input in the comments section, I now know this: The laser harp is a real, functioning hi-tech instrument. BUT at big outdoor gigs, depending on conditions, the triggering can be unreliable. Therefore, it seems that Jarre, at some of the more monstrous outdoor concerts, had the laser harp sound sequenced and mimed the playing. Guess he didn't want anything to go wrong. After all, HE is infallible.

There's a lot of discussion (still!) about the Laserharp used live by Jean Michel Jarre in Rendezvous, if it's fake or not. Well, in the video below, Paul Wiffen says that it's fake (around 0.30). Paul Wiffen is the guy who programmed the preset sounds for the Elka Synthex (used on Rendezvous). And on the other video, can someone explain how Jean Michel modulates the frequency with the laser harp? He doesn't do that on the La Defense concert. Jarre works in mysterious ways....

Youtube via Sharpblue

Youtube via richiology