After seeing the energetic guitar playing of Muse’s Matt Bellamy, I wanted to give electronic musicians a tool to achieve similar playing style with high visual impact. Easily, without years of training. And make them move.
Chara is Greek noun which describes a feeling of inner gladness, delight or rejoicing.
Kara rhymes with Finnish word for guitar, “kitara”.
Of course, there’s karaoke.
Reinventing The Wheel
In early concepts player would start a sound by rotating a wheel. Rotational speed would define the velocity for the sound. The rotation could be stopped by palm muting. The direction would define MIDI channel.
As the note layout of a guitar fretboard is quite complicated for many, the conventional keyboard layout was copied and mirrored.
Scratch That
After numerous design iterations, coding and testing sessions, breadboard connections, deformed 3D printed parts, PMMA fumes from laser cutter, layers of paint, wasted adhesives, PCB rats net corrections, capacitive touch calibrations and CNC machining hours… Kara prototype was finally ready in May, 2018.
Trigger Happy
The notes are selected from fingertip-sized pits. The prototype has a four-octave Pitboard.
With Note Triggers, the selected notes are played by strumming or tapping.
Strummed notes are sustained indefinitely. There’s no need to touch them any longer; player can freely select new notes without affecting the strummed ones. If nothing has been selected from the Pitboard, strum action repeats the previously selected notes.
When tapping, player touches one or more Note Trigger(s) and the selected notes are played via the touched channel(s). If there are strummed notes playing on the channel, tapping stops them.
When Motion Trigger is touched, data from motion sensor is read.
Touching a Note Trigger, selects the associated MIDI channel.
The note layout was designed for easy memorization and for effortless selection of basic chords.
Command and Control
The usage of Note Triggers made a dual role for the Pitboard possible. The controller can recognise whether player has selected notes for playing, or values for MIDI Control Change messages.
Hence, double-tapping a pit sends various MIDI CC messages as described in the image below. After the initial double-tap, only one tap is needed.
Octaves 1 and 2 are reserved for sending values from 0 to 127 for MIDI CC number 60.
Octaves 3 and 4 are “switches” for MIDI CC numbers between 70 and 81.
To access a specific channel, MIDI CC messages from Octaves 1 to 3 are sent via the selected MIDI channel.
As DAWs have some global functions such as starting a recording, MIDI CC messages selected from Octave 4 are always sent through channel 5.
Show – Don’t Tell
To see the novel features in action, there’s a video below. For some reason, that performance gave me a 60s live concert vibe.
To see videos with less noise and not so frantic drummer, please visit: http://www.deomo.com
Here are some points of interest.
In the beginning, percussive sounds are played on MIDI channels 1 and 2 by tapping. Then, Raging Bass from Waldorf Nave on channel 3 is added to the mix.
At 0:33, Breakbeat loop clip is launched by double-tapping a pit. The double-tap sends a MIDI CC message that has been mapped to the Breakbeat loop slot. Later, at 3:39, the clip is toggled off in similar manner.
Starting at 1:22, Pitch Bend and MIDI CC 76 messages are sent based on data received from motion sensor.
Around 3:00, moving Kara does not affect the sound. Only after touching Motion Trigger at 3:04, the values from motion sensor are used.
At 3:32, strumming a note so that it stays on. There’s no need to reach for that Panic Button, this is by design. 🙂
In the end around 4:21, no, Kara is not altering the sound although it looks like it.
That’s a Wrap
To drop me a line, please use: tomi@deomo.com