Biography
Lippold Haken
Lippold Haken (b. 12 April 1961, Munich, West Germany) is an American computer scientist, educator, inventor, and instrument builder, teaching professor emeritus of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Best known as the creator of Continuum Fingerboard, an original touch-sensitive electronic music instrument, Haken contributed to many other digital audio technology products over the years and invented many real-time sound processing algorithms, such as timbre morphing.
Haken originated from Germany, the son of a renowned mathematician Wolfgang Haken (1928—2022), co-author of the "Four-Color Theorem" proof, who immigrated to the USA soon after Lippold was born. He studied at the University of Illinois, receiving his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1989. For over 15 years, Lippold Haken worked at the University's Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL), responsible for high-speed communications and network protocols of PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) — a pioneering educational mainframe system where many basic concepts in today's multi-user online interaction originated. In 1982, Haken co-developed Lime music notation editor with Dorothea Blostein from Queen's University At Kingston. In 1986, Lippold Haken collaborated with Kurt J. Hebel to design Platypus, a hardware DSP unit that powered Carla Scaletti's "Kyma" digital synthesis software (both Carla and Kurt worked with Lippold at CERL). He continued partnering with their new company, Symbolic Sound, developing Kyma's real-time DSP algorithms for additive and granular synthesis, sound morphing, and other functions.
Haken began working on his "Continuum Fingerboard" in the early 1980s while studying at UIUC. A ground-breaking MIDI/Kyma controller had a fabric ribbon as a monolithic "keyboard" instead of separate hard-fixed keys, tracking the performer's fingers with sub-millisecond precision. After perfecting the design enough to produce commercial units by 1999, Lippold co-founded Haken Audio company in the early 2000s to further develop and manufacture his invention. Since 2008, Continuum has evolved into a standalone synthesizer. It has been adopted by many prominent international musicians, including Jordan Rudess, keyboardist of the major progressive metal band Dream Theater, prominent Indian composer A.R. Rahman, Sarth Calhoun in Metal Machine Trio (occasionally playing Continuum Fingerboards duo with Lou Reed on stage), John Paul Jones, Randy Kerber, Amon Tobin, Theremin players Rob Schwimmer and Andrew Levine.
As an engineering consultant, Haken developed specialized hardware for Motorola to test video cellphone technology and worked with Shure on specialized software, such as frequency assignment algorithms to minimize interference between wireless microphones and monitoring systems for wireless receiver equipment. He also contributed to the core algorithm of APTuner, a popular instrument-tuning application for PC and mobile devices, and invented an original editing and printing technology to produce Braille music scores for visually-impaired performers in collaboration with Dancing Dots from Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
Haken originated from Germany, the son of a renowned mathematician Wolfgang Haken (1928—2022), co-author of the "Four-Color Theorem" proof, who immigrated to the USA soon after Lippold was born. He studied at the University of Illinois, receiving his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1989. For over 15 years, Lippold Haken worked at the University's Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL), responsible for high-speed communications and network protocols of PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) — a pioneering educational mainframe system where many basic concepts in today's multi-user online interaction originated. In 1982, Haken co-developed Lime music notation editor with Dorothea Blostein from Queen's University At Kingston. In 1986, Lippold Haken collaborated with Kurt J. Hebel to design Platypus, a hardware DSP unit that powered Carla Scaletti's "Kyma" digital synthesis software (both Carla and Kurt worked with Lippold at CERL). He continued partnering with their new company, Symbolic Sound, developing Kyma's real-time DSP algorithms for additive and granular synthesis, sound morphing, and other functions.
Haken began working on his "Continuum Fingerboard" in the early 1980s while studying at UIUC. A ground-breaking MIDI/Kyma controller had a fabric ribbon as a monolithic "keyboard" instead of separate hard-fixed keys, tracking the performer's fingers with sub-millisecond precision. After perfecting the design enough to produce commercial units by 1999, Lippold co-founded Haken Audio company in the early 2000s to further develop and manufacture his invention. Since 2008, Continuum has evolved into a standalone synthesizer. It has been adopted by many prominent international musicians, including Jordan Rudess, keyboardist of the major progressive metal band Dream Theater, prominent Indian composer A.R. Rahman, Sarth Calhoun in Metal Machine Trio (occasionally playing Continuum Fingerboards duo with Lou Reed on stage), John Paul Jones, Randy Kerber, Amon Tobin, Theremin players Rob Schwimmer and Andrew Levine.
As an engineering consultant, Haken developed specialized hardware for Motorola to test video cellphone technology and worked with Shure on specialized software, such as frequency assignment algorithms to minimize interference between wireless microphones and monitoring systems for wireless receiver equipment. He also contributed to the core algorithm of APTuner, a popular instrument-tuning application for PC and mobile devices, and invented an original editing and printing technology to produce Braille music scores for visually-impaired performers in collaboration with Dancing Dots from Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.