What in the world is an Eigenharp?

The Eigenharp is an electronic musical instrument that is part percussive in nature, part wind in nature. Best of my knowledge it is essentially a MIDI controller, where you load sounds into the instrument via a computer, then play whatever sound your heart desires. Basically its a magical bassoon-guitar-synthesizer-drum machine machine.

The following information is stolen from Wikipedia:

The distinctive characteristics of all of the instruments are:

• A matrix of velocity sensitive multi-expressive keys, each of which act like a 4-way analog joystick. This allows the simultaneous pitch bend and modulation (or other parameters) of each played note individually.
• A stick-like vertical form factor akin to a sitar for the larger models or a flute in the smaller ones.
• A built-in wind controller, giving the larger versions of the instrument an appearance similar to a bassoon.
• One or two ribbon controller strips
• Macintosh-based control software, with an early Windows version now available.

Additionally, the larger models have:

• A series of percussion keys
• A built-in step sequencer with indicator LEDs for each key.

Models:

Alpha

1 breath pipe, 120 key matrix, 12 percussion keys, 2 ribbon controller strips on the sides, a microphone input and a headphone output

Tau

1 breath pipe, 72 key matrix, 12 percussion keys, 1 ribbon controller strip on the back and a headphone output

Pico

1 breath pipe, 18 key matrix and 1 ribbon controller strip on the front

and none of that will make sense without watching the following video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcVqJh0qEMc

(I'm not tech-savy enough for that to be a link, so copy and paste)

cheers,

-Scott