Loom - Multidimensional MPE Ribbon from Aodyo

The Lounge Other Gear
#1

Jump past speculation.

Aodyo is about to unveil a new product which they are calling Loom. They describe it as a “multidimensional tactile ribbon”, and also as a " multidimensional MPE MIDI controller". They are launching this on Kickstarter.

Here’s a video from five months back of the very early integration phase for this technology. As you can see it is a 2-D wood surface, that senses the amount of touch as well as position. I think it also senses velocity,

This is set up with a 25 key guide, with 25 multicolored LEDs, one for each key. They describe the ribbon in their Anyma Omega description as follows :

You can also play Anyma Omega Desktop directly, using the various playing modes of the percussive built-in ribbon touch controller (notes with quantized or continuous pitch, single or multiple CC parameter control, etc.).

As you can see in this photo it has a small screen, and four simple buttons. Two buttons are labeled octave + and -. The other two buttons are labeled MODE and ARP. Not sure what the rest of the stuff over on the left side is, there are three LEDs, and not sure about that small rectangle.

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Thanks to @icaria36 for spotting the video, and to @bibeno for suggesting the launch of a thread, and to several others for the discussion so far.

We’ll no doubt hear more about this soon, but for the moment there is still room for some good speculation.

There was already some discussion in the Crowdfunding thread.

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MPE Synth/Controller options
Crowdfunding — The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
Anyma Omega Keyboard and Desktop from Aodyo
Hydrasynth from ASM
Midi controllers with capacitive keyboard
#2

Ooh, just picked up Allen S. Weiss : Varieties of Audio Mimesis - Les presses du réel (book) and this has me interested in a more continuous, less quantized/scaled/tonal performance.

Keepin track for the future, though I do not need to preorder until I know much more about how it works in practice :slight_smile:

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#3

“Loom” was my dj name for years. This machine has to be mine.

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#4

image

In the comments of the teaser video.

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#5

hmm looks exactly like the haken continuum mini?

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#6

Does it? They both look like ribbon controllers. But the loom looks to have maybe double the vertical touch area. And is wood instead of the stretchy neoprene stuff — which would make it much more like tapping a touchscreen rather than pressing in on a wetsuit for good and ill.

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#7

Having owned and sold a Continuumini, I think the one single greatest issue I had with it was how it handled the “vertical” axis – you essentially pushed/tilted the touchstrip off its axis horizontal axis, which always felt bizarre to me. So, this looks to handle the this differently – maybe better, maybe worse, but I’m certainly interested to find out.

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#8

i meant the looks of it. 4 buttons + small display on the left, piano keys above the playing surface…
i had the continnumini a few years ago and yes, the up/down axis felt weird to play and more often than not it just felt like an on/off situation, depending on the preset of course.

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#9

In the image there are the 25 black and white note guides across the top. But there are 9 alternating black and white bars as a guide below. One for every three notes.

I know the Loom has a percussive playing ability. Could these 9 bars be set up to give finger drum pad areas ?

#10

Also in the image there is a large white marking under the entire wood playing area, and a smaller white marking on the left side under that small rectangular area, whatever that is. These two markings are connected to the two LEDs on the left. And the small rectangular area has its own LED connected to it.

This all has some playing function. Wonder what that might be ?

#11

Guess I’m just not seeing it. OLED vs seven-segment display. LEDs along the top indicating (presumably) notes. Some sort of squircle touch thing in the “O”. One of them is neon red… :wink:

Controls-on-the-left and similar-key-markings are standard for all keyboards and people don’t get them confused. I have to imagine the chances would be less for this.

#12

This looks like Aodyo testing the market - and maybe releasing a “full size” version in the future. I hope it turns out well for them. :slight_smile:

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#13

What size is full size, to you ?

#14

Good question… I’m open minded and might as well enjoy this particular model, my mind was just going to Linnstrument or Soundboard sizes I guess, as they might give a wider range of pitch probably.

I believe that we might get more and more sensitive surfaces as we go along, so the size of the area might not matter as much. Maybe in the future we’ll have a surface that can sense the individual hairs of a paint brush - imagine what that could do for innovative musical performances…

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#15

Part of why i ask is that Aodyo is developing the 49 key length 2-D ribbon for their Omega Keys.

It’s unclear now what the Loom will be exactly. We have about 12 hours to go until we get more information, though maybe not the complete picture even then. Aodyo did funding for two versions of the Omega so there’s that possibility for two versions of Loom right from the get go.

As for other higher definition touch systems

There are several technology companies that have and are doing those sorts of things.

Sensel was one, and they’re still in business, though they dropped the Morph it is still possible that their technology could make another appearance in some form.

Another, also a French company, is Embodme. We here may be aware of them because of their Erae products, but they are a technology company and are also developing a high resolution touch system similar to Sensel as well.

There are others but i will end this sidebar here.

I am going to guess that one large and significant difference with Loom to the Linnstrument and Continuum systems is going be in price. Loom is, i think, going to be more in the Keith McMillen MPE product price category, but with different capabilities of course.

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#16

About size, the Omega desktop ribbon is 40cm wide according to the specs. Looking at the Loom picture, that ribbon could be 40 cm as well, which would make a lot of sense to get two products out of the same base module.

The Omega keyboard ribbon is 65 cm according to specs, but I wonder whether a product that long and thin is viable on its own, as opposed to being a complement of a keyboard as it is in the Omega. And if you increase the surface with a larger depth, then it’s not a ribbon anymore, and probably not the same instrument/product either (and way more expensive to produce?)

Less than 8 hours to go for the announcement.

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#17

About size : Two Octaves

When i play melody on a ribbon, going over two octaves, and making pitch shifts more than two octaves, i some times find useful.

But harmonically, i mean from the ability to make a chord, two octaves has enough space for me to make any chord in any root. You can’t unwrap all the open chord inversions, but an arpeggiator can do that.

One thing i like in microtonal systems, is harmonically being able to bend parts of a chord just a little. To get the pure just tuning. Maybe moving the third around, or sliding two notes and transitioning from one chord to another. Like V to I, or ii to V, etc.

For weaving chords, two octaves would be enough.

I wonder about describing three, or four, or maybe even five notes, of an arpeggiated chord and being able to bend those notes just slightly, and have those bent notes arpeggiate.

The multicolored LEDs above each key, not sure but potentially, the color could feedback information on pitch bend ? Or perhaps the color might reflect on a vertical position change, that also might arpeggiate ?

About size : Finger Drumming

Eight pads, each a different percussive element, particularly if they each had an expressive playing surface, one for each of the four fingers of two hands, would work very well. I notice that the black and white guide stripes below the playing surface make nice sized square playing pads, about the right size.

It might be nice to be able to lay down a pattern, and have that pattern loop.

#18

Bleh, still waiting for someone to release an Ondes style pulley system

#19

I think you’re in the wrong thread. Perhaps you are looking for the Therevox thread ?

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#20

I think one thing we often forget is that keyboard synths sort of derive from the piano, and the piano has an incredibly abnormally wide range compared to almost all other chromatic/pitched instruments. This is sort of like if we judged all dogs by Great Dane standards.

So, two octaves is plenty for most instruments to be quite expressive. That said, I wouldn’t mind a mode that extended the range at the sacrifice of dis-orienting the surface from the markings surrounding it.

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