Around Halloween last year, I discovered the Eigenharp. Immediately I placed an order for the Pico, the entry level instrument. It is a digital instrument, but the music you create feels very analogue. It’s sensitive to keypresses (it has 16 playing keys normally, arranged in two columns) in three dimensions. It makes a different sound (or can) depending on how fast you hit the key, how hard you hit the key and then how you move that key up/down or left/right.

It arrived in early November and I soon decided that I was a “wind” person, despite years of playing piano as a child… and that the supplied model of a clarinet was not exactly what I was looking for. I found a recommendation for a synth called “Reaktor” and a wind instrument model called “Silverwood v3″. It sounded great – as long as I tapped the keys with enough velocity, if I just touched the key, it often missed the note.

Eigenlabs fixed this bug tout de suite. Suddenly I feel as though I have an expressive flute at my fingertips. It hasn’t suddenly made me into a prodigy however. Now I have to practice, but at least because the sound is generated on the computer, I can do it in private: with headphones.