Developer Gavin Day let us know that he’s been developing a proximity-based MIDI controller, the Skapa Sound Air, that’s designed to provide infra-red gestural control in a beautiful hand-crafted, natural wood housing.
The Air lets you control instruments via both MIDI and CV simultaneously, with clear LED feedback.
Features:
- Infra-red proximity detection, enabling you to control the parameters of your synths with a wave of your hand.
- LED meter showing your parameter level. Designed to be easy to see, whether in the studio or in a live setting.
- Lockable parameter level with a simple hand gesture.
- Output to both MIDI and CV simultaneously – both using 3.5mm mini-jack sockets (MIDI requires mini-jack to 5 pin DIN adapter).
- MIDI channel programmable (channels 1 to 16).
- MIDI Control Change (CC) setting programmable between 16 values.
- CV output range 0V to +5V.
- USB powered (USB-C)
The Air is currently in development. Details on pricing and availability are to be announced. See the Skapa Sound site for details.
Very cool.
I love to see companies creating instruments that combine capability with craftsmanship.
The caveat I have with this is that there have been a lot of interesting gestural controllers (theremin, GECO/Leap Motion, MIMU Glove), along with a lot of not-so interesting gestural controllers (D-Beam, ROLI Airwave).
When the controller gives you deep control of your performance, it’s both powerful and interesting to audiences. When people just use gestures to control filter cutoff, it kind of looks stupid.
Is this essentially the Roland D-beam technology in a fancy jacket?
Couldn’t you ask that of any gestural controller?
Or you could ask “Isn’t Roland D-Beam technology essentially a dumbed-down theremin?”
or Alesis Air
I have two Alesis Photon X25 with XYZ infra red assignable controllers. They are quite cheap on eBay but harder to find these days. No CV though. Skapa seems to pack it all together, but with only some LEDs for instrumentation, does it flow?