A Hands-On Demo Of The Hotz Box MIDI Translator, The Pioneering Atari MIDI Controller Used By Mick Fleetwood, Jon Anderson & Kitaro

Reader Sean McKee shared this video that takes an in-depth look at the Hotz Box MIDI Translator – a pioneering MIDI controller, originally released by Atari.

Video summary:

“A history, overview and tutorial of the very rare Hotz Box MIDI Translator hardware and software, invented by Jimmy Hotz. I decided to make this video because the only videos I found of this synth MIDI controller were of people playing the Hotz Box, but there was really no information out there on how it worked, and on forums it was very misunderstood.

Hopefully this video will provide enough insights to educate people interested in this system and how it can be used.”

Hotz Box creator Jimmy Hotz is still at it, making controllers and a Windows version of the software. You can find out more at his site.

10 thoughts on “A Hands-On Demo Of The Hotz Box MIDI Translator, The Pioneering Atari MIDI Controller Used By Mick Fleetwood, Jon Anderson & Kitaro

  1. Look, its an embryonic Continuum! I get the feeling that this was almost designed to partly be a MIDI lighting controller type of beast. We’ve seen a few of those appear. At least that’s what a couple of the strips would do for a Jarre show!

    Its a bit harder to appreciate this properly because MPE is still a new thing whose parameters are defined, but whose GUIs are definitely not. The Hotz Box is a bit like MPE v.1.0.1. Until the controllers settle down at least a little more, this area will mostly be for forward-thinkers who are slightly crazier and a lot richer than the usual musician.

    1. The closest thing to the Hotz software is called Autotonic, which lets you assign different key and scale selections to each black key, with the white keys being the notes of that scale in the key that you chose. I’m not aware of any iPad based takes on the Hotz hardware, but even if there were, it wouldn’t have the pressure sensitivity. Only a few older model iPhones up through iPhone 8 had pressure sensitivity called 3D Touch. This gives that extra dimension that makes an app like Jordan Rudess’ GeoShred even cooler, too bad they never put 3D Touch on an iPad.

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