Do each of these respond to a different midi channel? Or different octave ranges on a single channel?
different octave ranges on a single channel as far as i can tell…
2 Likes
hi, i’m struggling to connect my new friend carlo to my op-z or indeed a korg nanokey studio …any tips welcome, particularly on the op-z!
For op-z I first put the choir in pairing mode by turning them on and long pressing the power button. Then I turned on the op-z and pressed the Bluetooth button on the bottom side of the z. They just automatically corrected very quickly
3 Likes
worked like a charm - thanks for taking the time. definite autechre vibes playing back on the op-z, especially with the reverb cranked 
once they are back in stock and i’ve forgotten how much these guys cost i’ll be back for leila for sure!
2 Likes
3 Likes
I have been using two (Gisela and Carlo) with one just arrived (Bogdan) and one due soon (Miki).
Some general comments:
- they are fun to use and work with and I don’t have regrets over buying four. I suspect and hope that there would be limited increased utility in having all 8.
- they connect and work together easily, which is pleasing … although I do have to route my digital piano through my iPad to pass the signal on.
- the lack of documentation is frustrating.
- TE have been sub-optimal in terms of on/off and charging. You can’t easily tell whether the choir member is on or off and power on/off and connection is always connected by a vocal response which can get annoying. I still have no idea how and when to charge - connecting to power seems to turn the speakers on, but there’s no easy way of knowing they are charged and the single red LED doesn’t give feedback here - it can blink, but can’t go green or doesn’t turn off even after charged overnight.
- the division of voices seems to only work at about a 95% level of accuracy. I can play a 2 part harmony on the piano and every so often one of the voices won’t sound. I can then replay the two notes and it will, so this isn’t related to the vocal range and doesn’t seem to be related to velocity either. Playing less complicated melodies (i.e, longer notes, fewer changes) makes things better, but it’s not ideal.
- the choir will cycle through songs if left alone and quickly start the next song after finishing the previous one. Most songs are only 1-2 minutes long.
- annoyingly, on at least one occasion, while I was still connected via bluetooth and I was playing away, they started to sing a programmed song too.
- I too have had no success playing around with the MIDI CC changes (vibrato, reverb, consonant, vowel) while connecting the OP-Z to the choir. I can only presume this function just isn’t working yet.
5 Likes
A few of your comments are mirrored in Hainbachs overview so ya not alone.
3 Likes
A slightly frustrating morning after acquiring Bogdan. Part of that is trying to just plough through TouchOSC with no experience of it to see if I could start testing the MIDI CC #1-4 with specific values to the choir, but most of it was with the choir itself.
A few more things:
- there is a diabolical combo at work of a lack of documentation, a lack of feedback from the device(s), difficulty getting information into the device and perhaps a lack of features/finalisation that hinders getting things done.
- The lack of documentation is obvious.
- Feedback from the device is basically down to some voice confirmations (‘Power On!’) and the single red LED (that’s hidden when the speaker is in the wooden ‘person case’). So, no way of knowing whether the device is charged or how much, no way of knowing which MIDI device it’s connected to, no way of knowing if it’s on/off unless you remember.
- The lack of information in is down to a combo of it no being clear if the MIDI channels sending vibrato, reverb, consonant and vowel are working at all and also there being only one button for everything. Yes – there’s tilt/touch control too, but it’s not particularly straightforward and accurate. If you try to move a choir member while it’s on, then good luck! It’s possible to use even one button well, but there isn’t really any smart implementation on choir – e.g. you can’t double tap to turn on a song and triple tap to advance to the next song etc.
- The lack of documentation is galling. Presumably, many people worked on the project over many months and there is a lot of detailed knowledge about how they work, tips and tricks and what is still to be implemented. Yet, this is reduced to a manual shorter than my post here.
- All of the above is not too bad when things ‘just work’, but when they don’t then it makes things 10x more difficult. Bogdan just stopped singing about 1 minute in this morning consistently and it felt like he was telling the others not to. No idea what happened or why or if this is a fault. I have ‘solved’ for now by initially leaving the others off while Bogdan went through a few more songs on his own and then powering on Gisela and Carlo.
- I get a sense that the choir cycle through vowels/consonants each note based on limited playing around. Without at least better documentation, even with getting the vowel/consonant control working, I don’t fancy being the one mapping each value against the international phonetic alphabet or similar, especially since TE clearly have this info available to them.
- As a more minor physical point and the above is made worse on Bogdan and Olga, since you have no ready access to the one button once the speaker is back inside their case as it should be.
In short, feature request that I might send back:
- As Hainbach also said, a speech synthesis utility would be great.
- Even without one, a general utility/app, even Orthoplay, that can tell you about the status of each choir member would really improve things ten-fold. FW version, battery level and hopefully the MIDI signals it is receiving processing.
- Much better documentation.
- Working vowel/consonant.
- Remapping the on-board button (esp. in the absence of an app) to allow basic things like changing the song.
- Any app/utility like the above that can allow saving new songs to the devices, even if it means overwriting the preset songs.
- Possibility to output normal audio and use them as standard speakers. I don’t care much to use them as standard speakers, but you would think it would be very simple to implement and add a lot of versatility.
4 Likes
i’ve just been in touch with TE support via email. they said the encoder function to change the characteristic of the choir voice should be working when playing the choir with the op-1f. i can’t get it to work… seems its not working on your end either? they asked me to send a video of it not working which i did. i’m not sure if i’m doing it wrong or something, not sure of the intended effect. but i can’t detect any changes to anything by moving the encoders on the op-1f or the op-z. you too?
1 Like
Correct. I haven’t tried with an OP-1F, but the choir connected seamlessly to the OP-Z via MIDI only to do absolutely nothing when turning any of the four encoder dials.
1 Like
My Miki arrived today - what an amazing, unique thing this is. Some initial findings:
-
the 4 CC controls work fine for me - the 1 - tremolo works on long sustain notes, quite subtle. 2,3 - vowel and consonant also quite subtle/random and seem to work in combination, 4 - reverb is very nice sounding and obvious at max. If they are not working for you, first thing is to make sure your OP-Z midi settings are on the default CC1-4 for the dials.
-
Miki listens on all midi channels, so currently can’t have OP-Z playing music notes on multiple tracks with one dedicated to Miki as she will sing all notes on all tracks. Hopefully there will be a way to set this in the future.
-
Connected a Korg microKey25 Bluetooth and all worked OK, including CC controls
-
Connected to Mac as Bluetooth Midi device and was able to play from Live, etc and use CC’s. Using MidiPipe to route/filter midi channels from the OP-Z and sending to Miki which works around the all channels problem. Also allows use of the OP-Z phone app at the same time.
-
Connecting the USB-C cable to the Mac, Miki is displayed as a 1MB USB drive (called CH-8) and has a couple of txt files with instruction on firmware upgrade, so hopefully updates will appear in time…
8 Likes
This is great, husker. Thanks for reporting back!
I haven’t experimented much with the MIDI CC1-4, but I can accept that trying it quickly in an environment with kids and noise and perhaps I just didn’t try hard enough especially since it seems to rotate between vowel/consonant automatically. I’ll try again now in more controlled conditions!
I can’t believe I didn’t try just plugging into my Mac. I’ll check out those txt files, however underwhelming, when I get home.
2 Likes
Other than the reverb, the CC controls don’t change the note already being sung so you can’t hold a key down and hear any change. Best to have a sequence playing and then twiddle the controls for full effect.
Also noted on the box, Miki was ‘made and assembled in poland’ - so describing her singing voice as Swedish/Polish/Japanese would be a fair description
Next thing to try: Miki singing into the vocoder on the MicroFreak…
4 Likes
I sent my feedback to TE who passed on the feature requests to the appropriate department. They also said that a double tap should skip song (something not mentioned in the manual) but it’s not working for me.
BTW — interestingly and groov.nz (who 8 ordered Miki from) have the Choir in stock and they have an estimated delivery on the members that they’ve sold out of February 2023. So, this suggests TE are going to keep churning them out, or at least produce a second batch.
1 Like
I’m sure it originally said in the blurb that the wood used was hand polished/smoothed in Spain. I do tend to mis-read things late at night on the phone though.
CC’s finally working over here with the whole choir. check out the choir post on the lines forum for more information- llllllll.co
you have to navigate to the controller screen on the op-1f and then the encoders will function. i’m sure that’s how its always been, but never in my life have i used my op as a midi controller so i’d never been to that screen before…
1 Like
These are all back in stock if anyone is interested!
SIKE: I was duped, the TE online gift shop for the holidays made it look like they were all in stock. Upon further clicking into the product, they are all still sold out.
after watching the hainbach video and stuff I think i’m going to hold until they progress further in their firmware, and if I miss it entirely I think i’ll be ok.
Really looking forward to seeing where they go though!
also really looking forward to more product launches and firmwares across the board haha
1 Like
The way I see it is ya not gonna be content with just one, so it’s gonna be a pretty pricey outlay on something that would possibly be a one-afternoon childlike wonder, their charms destined to catch kitchen cobwebs. Beautiful to hear and watch on cool videos though.
I got Bogdan, Hatshepsut, Olga, and Leila for about a week now and started collecting some information on the choir here: GitHub - jetztgradnet/Choirama: Findings about Teenage Engineering Choir (CH-8)
I also tore down one sound module and documented my findings (and pictures!) in that Github repo.
Find here a teaser:
I started a table to document the CC-to-vowel and -consonant mappings, but haven’t properly transcribed them yet.
Feel free to chime in with additional information, either here or directly on Github via PRs or by creating issues.
3 Likes