The next-generation electronic instrument

The Haken Continuum Fingerboard is an instrument born to be as expressive and as rewarding to play as an acoustic instrument. The uniquely designed sensitive playing surface has been symbiotically merged with its powerful synthesis sound engine to produce a truly unique playing experience. The  Continuum is a holistic electronic instrument that puts its player at the heart of a uniquely fluent, organic and intuitive musical playing experience.

From melodic composition to the avant-garde

The Continuum Fingerboard can give you that edge you are looking for in sound, expression and creativity. We do not say it will be immediate, although the continuum sounds great and is fun and accessible when you first start playing, it truly shines when you treat the learning curve like a traditional acoustic instrument. Practicing technique and taking time to build a relationship and understand the Continuum will reward you with amazing performances. The more time you put in, the more the Continuum will give you back. This is what truly makes it a different experience to a traditional synthesizer.

Passion in Design and Build

Designed by Dr. Lippold Haken and hand-built in his basement, each Continuum Fingerboard is meticulously constructed by hand for optimal quality and longevity. This again is where Haken Audio separates itself from large electronic music manufacturers. Haken Audio looks upon itself like a hand-built guitar manufacturer would. Building small numbers and carefully crafting the instrument with love and attention to detail is the ethos of Dr. Lippold Haken. The new Slim Continuums are available in two versions: Slim70 70s8x (70 half steps) and Slim46 46s8x (46 half steps). The recently-released ContinuuMini gives Continuum fans a smaller instrument with a lower price of entry into the Continuum Fingerboard family.

Features

What Artists Say!

The ContinuuMini

The ContinuuMini has been designed to be a portable and more affordable version of Haken Audio's larger Continuum Fingerboards. The ContinuuMini is fun to play, has the same sound engine as the “big” Continuums, and delivers it’s own unique and rewarding musical performance experience. 

Control Dimensions

Designed by Dr. Lippold Haken and manufactured by Haken Audio, the Continuum Fingerboard is a musical instrument that allows unprecedented real-time performance control. With a greater pitch range than a 61 note Midi keyboard, the Continuum offers realtime continuous control in three dimensions for every finger that is placed on the playing surface. This communicates an immense amount of information to its custom-designed user programmable synthesizer. Specifically programmed to take advantage of the subtle, dramatic and expressive musical possibilities of the Continuum's surface.

A Gloriously Unique Sound Engine

“The EaganMatrix is a unique sound engine with cohesive multiple synthesis topologies including - Subtractive Synthesis, Physical Modelling with Modal Filter Banks, FM, Spectral Sets with Micro Analysation, including Waveguide with Feedback and Feedback Delay Networks.”

At the heart of the instrument is the truly innovative sound engine of The EaganMatrix! This synthesizer was invented by Edmund Eagan, and was specifically designed to take advantage of the subtle and dramatic expressive musical possibilities of the Continuum’s surface. The EaganMatrix is a modular digital synthesizer, allowing the user to finely craft their musical sound by digitally connecting audio and control modules via a patching matrix. The EaganMatrix synthesizer is internal to the Continuum Fingerboard, utilizing the Continuum's internal DSP engine. No external hardware is required as both playing surface and sound engine are intertwined as one musical instrument. The synthesizer is edited by using the 'Haken Editor', an external cross-platform editing program that allows you to explore all the possibilities of a fully modular, patchable synthesis engine, with all the screen real-estate of your computer.

It's all about the Matrix

The EaganMatrix is inspired by classical modular matrix patching synthesizers such as the ARP 2500 and the EMS Synthi 100. However, unlike those analogue predecessors, the EaganMatrix doesn't use pins to make patch point connections.

The most responsive electronic playing surface on the market today

The Continuum Fingerboard has an exceptionally quick response time and is the most sensitive pressure resolution electronic music device on the market today. It is very different from your average Midi MPE touch-responsive keyboard or controller. These are some of the most important reasons it is a leader in its field:

1- When played, the Continuum has the ability to evaluate a high-speed stream of performance data, and among other things can effectively encode the complex trajectory of your finger attack. From a psychoacoustic perspective, getting the attack trajectory of your finger accurately scanned, measured and conveyed comprehensively to the sound engine is an essential ingredient for a real-time expressive playing experience.

2- The Continuum completes a scan of its entire playing surface every 330 microseconds. This surface evaluation speed is crucial for smooth, uninterrupted, organic playing.

3- The Continuum has pressure resolution of up to 15 bits for long sustained notes, allowing the detailed expression of tiny pressure-related timbre changes and accurate pitch trajectories in pressure-weighted portamentos.

All these unique technologies within the Continuum will give you an unparalleled playing experience, one which no other electronic music device on the market can match. For Midi communication to external devices, the Continuum can output MPE and MPE+, and can also be connected for control voltage output. However, we are not just another Midi MPE company. We are more than that, we are an instrument maker that crafts the closest thing to an acoustical experience in an electronic music device. This is achieved by using high-grade mechanical components, high-level sensing technologies and meticulous construction methodology, bringing the Continuum's playing surface, sound DSP and software together in a synergistic collaboration that no other electronic musical device can yet achieve.

Check out the Sound Examples section of this web site: Introduction Videos, EaganMatrix Examples, Historical Techniques, External Synths, and Analog Synths. Many technical details can be found in the Continuum User Guide and the EaganMatrix User Guide (available for download in the support section of this web site).