Expressive E Touché

Loo king like an organically sourced wah-wah
pedal, Expressive E’s Touché MIDI controller
is designed to work with both hardware and
software instruments. It controls up to eight
plugin parameters at once, and outputs MIDI
CCs and CV signals, through movement of a
‘loating’ wooden surface – called the Skin – in
four directions: downwards at the top and
bottom ends (or both together), and left and
right in its entirety. The whole contraption is
sprung, returning to the centre when released.
For the body of this review, we’re looking at
Touché as a software controller – Standalone
mode discusses its use with hardware synths.
The idea is to tie meaningful sets of
instrument parameters to the four axes for
collective one-handed control. For example,
modulate a synth’s ilter cutof and resonance
individually or together by assigning them to
the top and bottom of the Skin, and couple them
with, say, modwheel and vibrato depth on left
and right. Assigning plugin parameters and
managing presets is done in the included Lié
plugin. You also get 500MB of mapped presets
for UVI’s free UVI Workstation plugin – basses,
pads, bells, keys, leads, etc – making a
compelling showcase right out of the box.
Physically, Touché feels every bit as
‘premium’ as its price suggests it should. The
casing is solid and weighty, and the Skin feels
great under the ingers, with a satisfying degree
of resistance in all four directions. It’s USB-
powered, too, so no juice is required when
plugged into a computer, and a mobile phone
charger will suice for standalone operation.
The two buttons at the bottom are used to
navigate internal and computer-stored presets,
and the rotary encoder increases and decreases
the Skin’s tilt sensitivity. The lateral sensitivity is
tweaked by removing the (magnetically-
attached) Skin and adjusting a slider
underneath. We assume there’s a mechanical
reason for the discrepancy between the two
adjustments. Pushing the encoder like a button,
Expressive E
Touché €399
This eye-catching French MIDI controller puts four directions of fully
conigurable and highly creative plugin wrangling right at your ingertips
The back panel houses MIDI and CV connections
“The Skin feels great
under the ingers,
with a satisfying
degree of resistance in
all four directions”
meanwhile, freezes Touché’s output, holding
assigned parameters at their current values
until pressed again.
Reading the Lié
The Lié VST/AU plugin acts as a ‘host within your
host’, like Native Instruments’ Komplete Kontrol,
connecting the hardware to the plugin loaded
into it. Having scanned your plugins folder, all
your VST instruments appear in the Plugin
menu at the top and the preset browser on the
right. Choose an instrument from the former
and all of its automatable controls become
available for selection in the parameter menus
of the eight assignment slots. Select a
parameter in a slot, click the top, bottom, left or
right (or left and right for bipolar control) of its
Skin graphic to assign that controller to it, set
the Min/Max range with the sliders, and you’re
good to go. Alternatively, parameters can be
linked to slots in the plugin interface itself, to
which the Lié ‘shell’ adds a row of slot buttons at
the top. Click a slot then a parameter to make
the link, or activate the Speedmapping button to
have the next eight parameters clicked auto-
map to the eight slots in order.
The output of each slot and the base position
of its plugin parameter are indicated in the
vertical scale next to the slot by an animated
meter and an orange arrow, respectively.
Clicking the square button at the bottom of a
slot opens its response curve display; clicking
that opens the Curve Editor on the right, for
freehand drawing and detailed editing of the
response map. When not occupied by the Curve
Editor, the right hand panel houses the Scope – a
Expressive E
98 / COMPUTER MUSIC / December 2017
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CMU250.rev_touche.indd 98 16/10/2017 10:44