Support the channel: patreon.com/hainbach Chromaplane on Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/komaelektronik/chromaplane-an-electromagnetic-musical-instrument?ref=section-homepage-view-more-discovery-p1
Coil pickups are fun. I have one mounted in a toy microphone which simultaneously baffles and enchants people when I use it to produce strange sounds. Back in the day this technique used to be called "circuit sniffing" and I'm very please someone turned the idea into a more controlled, performance instrument. The Chromaplane is classy, a nicely made and well thought out piece of hardware. They deserve the success it has gained.
the pickups were used to record and amplify telephone back in the day. you would just stick it to the ear side of the hand set . there awesome but noisey, i think i need to find a pair and see how they go with a noise gate and a few cheap earbuds as oscillator outputs
A lot of people have done cool things with coils (heard of it from Valentina Vuksic who has this cool piece with hard disks). I've done a live with a heap of electronic junk (including a VHS recorder; laptop and so on); and live chopping of the sound and it was a lot of fun. Has a friend who also used to build his own coils live (if you add a magnet you get a basic microphone). it's interesting to turn this idea into a tonal instrument; it's indeed very expressive.
Back in the 90's I used to point a TV remote at my guitar pickups with the gain turned up, and make strange beeping sounds. That was before I had any synths, same principle I guess! Not my thing these days, so I'm probably the only person in the comments that didn't like the sound of this. It's interesting though, and nice to see something different to the regular saw/triangle etc waveforms you get on most analogue synths. Hope this doesn't sound too negative, just not my cup of tea. Excellent video as always though 😉
Whenever I find myself feeling like I am doing some groundbreaking experimental work... There is Hainbach to humble me. Huge genuine thank you, Hainbach. Incredible work, and fantastic contributions to the community thanks so much!
@@Hainbach😂 funny guy. in all serious though, it's truly an honor to share the planet with you. We are all fortunate to be alive at this point in history when some of the original synth masters are still around and new synth masters are being born from synth technology reaching its full potential while vintage synth toys are still around to inspire us. We are very blessed.
Pledged this immediately after seeing this video. I have no music experience or training but I've always wanted something I can tinker with the make cool musical sounds. I love droning and creepy ambience, and this looks like it was tailor made for me. Awesome stuff.
This technique of music making you are showing reminds me of one of my earliest audio experiments as a late teenager where i found my toy "circuit maker" board where you can make different circuits with spring loaded connectors to make logic circuits and crystal radios. One of the circuits was a single tone synthesizer/buzzer. I modified the basic circuit by having other resisters wired up, and the pitch could change as i touched the spring taps. The listening device was an ear phone plugged into the little transformer on the board. Well, i have the same pickups you have which i scored from an old cassette recorder with the pickup meant to record telephone conversations, which was vintage 1950-60s. So when I found that the pickup could listen to the transformer, I have essentially what you have in your video, albeit a very primitive version. I plugged in the pickup into a "Realistic Reverb" effect unit which has a microphone input gain, a bucket brigade delay and a nasty reverb. My unit's delay was stuck in one position, but it was enough to make spacey sounds with it. Of course I recorded it and that tape is somewhere in the world. This video has very beautiful sounds, and seems perfect for movie scoring. I felt it relevant to share my story since i have never seen an instrument like the one you presented. Now in retrospect, by the way i played my toy, one can get interesting phase effects and volume fades just by moving the pickup around tastefully. That unit should have a programmable interface where you can tune the oscillators instantly with presets, and have such granular control for tuning in the tiniest of frequency changes. It would be very meditative to play too for Solfeggio frequencies if that is to one's taste. Cheers!
Sweet. Would be killer if there where kill switch buttons on the pickups. Very easy to press buttons to turn the pickups on. Let your finger off and they mute. Could play fast rhythms that way. What if the buttons triggered an modifiable envelope!
This is one of the most Hainbachy synths I've ever seen :D I wonder what it would sound like if you held a SOMA Ether directly over the Chromaplane plane…
They made military grade versions of those type of suction cup telephone pickups . They work amazing to make phasing type sounds waved above portable keyboards speakers.
Version of this with external inputs for every channel would be wonderful. Really like it as a interface but don't know if I need another analog voice.
This was the only thing that took my attention at Superbooth, pledged almost immediately when the campaign started. I like this new generation of devs that are into unconventional analog and electromagnetic in particular.
@@kammingaelijah3672 to be fair, at the very start of this video Hainbach mentioned making a video with the same pickups in 2019. It seems what's special about this is not the pickups, but rather the design of the circuitry inside the panel. Which, I'm sure you could implement DIY as well, but, I've never seen a synth that someone _couldn't_ do DIY if they really wanted!
Such a wonderful machine! I'll have to save up. Though this - and the clip from your older video - mostly reminds me that i need to play more with my Elektrosluch (the Lom Audio stereo EMF microphone, which i built from their open-source design). It's a good deal of fun listening to everything out in the world buzzing away, especially augmented by something like a Mini Kaoss Pad.
You reminded me that I forgot to put a reminder in my agenda for the super early-bird on the kickstarter. Still I manager to preorder one, at nightbird price!
True, but add oscillators to it and you are going well past $5. that’s like saying “you can get PS5 controllers for $30” but you also need a PS5 to play, buddy.
My humble opinion would be that it is more visually impressive than sonically (like most new gear campaigns!). The same sounds can be created using existing techniques and devices. We desperately need more music (ideas) nowadays - we do have enough gear to make it :)
I need to know what's visually impressive about an almost featureless grey plate, unless you're deeming MacBooks the Pinacle of design. Speaking of Apple, this is more about UX than sound output
Dude you could say that about literally any piece of gear. Yea you COULD sit down and program these sounds using existing techniques, but this looks a lot more intuitive and fun. Just don't get one if youre such a purist lol, you're obviously not the target audience
@@bartektrame8801 this is more from an engineering design standpoint, but I was kind of impressed they had so many controls on the side panel. I was expecting it to just be jacks. You could absolutely make this with knobs on the top instead, but those side-turn pots alongside the jacks do look pretty neat. But certainly the initial impression is that of featurelessness.
Minimalism is such a nice aesthetic. I think maybe they also meant there is so much new products that appeal to us not just by their aesthetic, but also because of their uniqueness they appeal to the gimmicky wonder gas we feel when we see such pretty things. True you can make the same sounds on many synths but as far as creating new instruments for performance, this is definitely appealing. .
Wonderful video that inspires as always. Is anyone else reminded of the Lyra8? Not in the interface method, but in the sound of the oscillators? There is a sweet sadness to them both.
This reminds me of something that would’ve been a larger version in the Image Works futuristic playground at Epcot’s Journey into imagination before they got rid of it, if anyone remembers that part
I’ve pre-ordered mine! Did you try it with the Soma electro-magnetic pickup thing? Would love to see that. And what you (Hainbach) can do with four pickups hooked to a mixer and panned, for the stereo effect you mentioned.
How stable is the tuning once you lock it in, in your experience? A friend and I were discussing it when the kickstarter went up and that was his major concern? Great video as always!
I'm not sure what this has to do with the video, but as you posted that comment I was having my first martini in many years and it didn't taste like the gin had been drowned. Just thought I'd say.
Am I correct to assume that what is special here is that the oscillators are designed and tuned to emit in the EM spectrum in a way that typical oscillators do not? Like a telephone pickup pic isn’t going to work if you hover over the Lyra or whatever will it?
From my experiments at Thomann you mostly get a bit of a noisey buzz when you use telephone coil pickups on synths. This is tuned exactly for clear reception, you don’t even hear the power lin
