The Haken Continuum Meets The Chinese Guzheng

Published on Apr 27, 2017 Peter Pringle

"Here is a short piece for Haken Continuum, and the Chinese zither known as the 'guzheng'. Normally, the guzheng is played with finger picks on the right hand, but I chose not to use picks so that I could move freely from one instrument to the other if I wanted to. This means that I had to sacrifice certain guzheng techniques (such as the tremolo) which require picks.

In this video I am using a full keyboard extension which sits just above the fingerpad of the Continuum and acts a mechanical alternative for playing the instrument. The extension has no electronic components, and is not connected in any way to the Continuum itself. Basically, it consists of a row of small mechanical depressors, one for each of its 88 keys, and is just a convenience to facilitate accurate and precise runs, arpeggios, trills, etc.

The Continuum is a thousand instruments rolled into a single interface. The sound you hear from it in this video is only one of a huge number of possibilities from sound designer Edmund Eagan. Unlike many new interfaces, the Continuum generates its own sounds independently, and does not require a computer."