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CMPSR

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Submitted By: Digit Music

Elevator Pitch

CMPSR

Fusing gaming design with musical capabilities, CMPSR is an expressive musical interface that enables everyone to play beats, chords and melodies with ease.

Product Description

How It’s Innovative

The innovation in our design lies in the unique mapping that can turn any 2d or 3d grid into a highly expressive musical interface. Our simple musical mapping works straight out of the box and can be applied to multiple sound sources and interface types. Initially designed for use with a joystick (CMPSR: Move) we now have an app which takes the interface to a 2d touch screen device (CMPSR: Swipe) and can be played using one finger or head tracking (CMPSR: Blink)
The inclusive design principles we use throughout our products mean they can be used by as many people as possible, regardless of their personal circumstances. Haptics enable visually impaired users to navigate the interface, haptic feedback support d/Deaf and hard of hearing users, and our self imposed design limitation of ‘one finger, one click’ means every function is available to those with limited dexterity or upper limb difference.
The mapping works straight out of the box so the ‘tuning’ is always the same, once you have set the key each position in the scale is the same – 1st is forward, fifth is right for instance. Much like on a traditional instrument, players improve through muscle memory. This mapping allowed us to devise a robust notation system called Arrownotes which works on colours and shapes and reduces the barriers to reading traditional notation.

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Most Inspiring Use Cases

Our instrument has enabled many young people to perform music who were otherwise offered limited options. As part of the Able Orchestra, CMPSR was used by 10 disabled young musicians to perform alongside the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Halle Orchestra playing live as part of a collaboration for The Association of British Orchestras conference.
One of the first users of CMPSR, a young disabled musician called Jess Fisher, now has a building career including performances for BBC Introducing and collaborations with the Halle Orchestra and bands like Alt.Blk.Era – CMPSR is her instrument and she writes and performs all of her music using it.

Expansion Plans

We will continue to grow sales of our hardware and software by developing brandpartnerships and influencer content but we see the big opportunity in developing a proposition for the rhythm game space where titles generating 10’s of millions of dollars every month still cannot enable engagement with pitch in any meaningful way. Even guitar hero which is now part of Fortnite cannot offer users any kind of progression to the ‘real’ world of music. The game we devise will have our interface at its core and players can take the skills they’ve developed in the game and turn them to casual or professional music apps – gamification but without the glass ceiling.
There is also a huge opportunity to license our interface to other developers in the gaming space – EPIC games for fortnite festival or Spaceape games for Beatstar for instance.
There are forecast to be over 1 billion musicians by 2030 and all of them are looking for fast, effective ways to sound professional. We believe, the tools our team has built which are based on years or writing and performing music at a professional level, offer the fastest route to musical success.

Commercialization

CMPSR:Move came to market in 2023 and we have sold 583 units, predominantly into education where our music toolkit (CMPSR instrument, Arrownotes, supporting audio content) holds a lot of value – £299 per unit.
We are working with Bandlab, Bitwig and Steinberg to build traction in the consumer space through targeted video content.
CMPSR: Swipe is currently going through app store approval for iOS and will be coming to android, MacOS and Windows in the near future. Upon release we will use a freemium model to give access to useful features and content for free and offer paid subscriptions (£1.99 per month initially) to access deeper functionality such as chord shapes, arpeggiator patterns, additional keys, external MIDI control etc. as well as audio content in the form of loops, samples and pre-prepared projects.
Our interface has huge licensing opportunities across the music creation space, instead of pressing CMD+K on Logic to use a QWERTY keyboard to control a piano keybed you’ll be able to access our interface and use the QWERTY keyboard to play complex chords and expressive melodies.

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