Tangible Instruments Arpeggio Video Demos

Tangible Instruments’ Charlie Lesoine shared a pair of new video demos for their upcoming Arpeggio, a portable MIDI arpeggiator and step sequencer.

The Arpeggio was originally planned to be released in April 2016. Lesoine told us that he now expects that “Arpeggio will be released next year.” Updates are being posted to the Kickstarter project site.

23 thoughts on “Tangible Instruments Arpeggio Video Demos”

  1. I paid for an Arpeggio in 2015, for an item whose functions are commonplace in other devices in 2019. Requests for refunds have been ignored.

    When the Kickstarter campaign went live in 2015, they claimed that the product was ready fir production in a marketing video. Then they claimed the developer ran off with the blueprints – ie, the dog ate the homework.

    Do not do business with Tangible Instruments. They are frauds and crooks.

    1. I’d like to second Josh’s warning about getting involved with Tangible Instruments. This product was clearly stated to be allegedly ready for production at the time of the Kickstarter four years ago. This was clearly a blatant lie, and obvious fraud.

      Many excuses have been offered over the years, and little to no progress has been made on the end product since, with no projected completion date or roadmap, and with minimal and unresponsive communication. Further, while this was a novel little piece of gear when the campaign was launched, it has been rendered effectively useless and pointless by any number of superior products offered at the same price-point.

      I would strongly suggest that Synthtopia remove this blog post in order to refrain from giving further financial support to a fraudulent creator and product.

      Absolutely shameful.

  4. The real update is in the comments! Glad this update was posted. I feel morally that if the company does in fact deliver the product then they tried their best. Indiegogo and Kickstarter are not stores, they are speculative financing programs where incompetence and over-optimism more often than fraud abounds but both exist in plenty. But over-optimism is a solid form of fraud when it comes to taking people’s money since every con artist since the beginning of time says he sincerely thought he could deliver.

    Anyway this news is a little bit useless since the only news this company can deliver is that the product is shipping to the people who paid for it. That is the only thing they can issue a press release about. To the customers they should be issuing periodic updates with proof of progress such as photographs of the factory and items coming off of its assembly line, and stacks of product being tested and boxed and labeled.

    I backed a whole lot of things on those platforms and never again. I used to say I never received a single “perk” but about a year ago DHS delivered a product that worked, about 4 years after its last expected delivery date. I won’t complain about that one because they did deliver… eventually. And sure I saved around 15% of the MSRP of the product. Perhaps that will compensate for the roughly $8000 in things that were never delivered and the company vanished.

    Will the Terpstra MIDI Keyboard at over $2000 each ever be delivered or will it just continue to be promoted as a successful design by the “design company” that promised it? Every source on that project, HEAVILY promoted by Synthtopia management, has gone silent. And no follow ups here for any failed project! Just promotion of dreams… to suckers.

    As Reineke mentions, by the time something is delivered, there very well may be better and cheaper offerings being sold by mainstream stores. That’s actually something of a win compared to the typical crowd-funding result which is nothing at all, or something totally different than what you were promised.

  5. “lol haters… somehow all your whining and bitching didn’t stop them from blowing past their kickstarter goal in less than a day. guess you’ll have to hate harder next time!”

    1. Insightful post.

      My Kickstarter offers a crisp $500 bill for only $298. We blew through our Kickstarter goal in less than a day. Guess the haters lost this round!

    2. You cannot use the word haters in this case…If you pay for something and don’t get it within ETA, this is simply not okay and bad production / time management….

      1. He put it in quotes, it was a joke about another thread here with some new instrument being crowdfunded. People criticized it and someone made that comment after it met its funding goals – as if meeting the funding goals based on extravagant promises is an assurance that the instrument as described will ever be built and delivered. Meeting the funding goals isn’t much if many years later the product has not shipped and in the meantime the market has moved on.

  6. Attention, developers: It is not a requirement to have “cute”, childish items and plants in your overhead shots of your products. I hate to pile on, since I know nothing of the history of this product or company, but this whole community needs to grow up.

  7. I was one of the backers, I was initially pissed when they said they’d miss their mark, but tbh, I’m happy they’ve got the moral compass to keep working on it. And probably soon I’ll have one of these cool little gadgets.
    Most companies that don’t reach their goals on kickstarter just give up. So people slagging on Tangible for persevering should check themselves. Kickstarter is an EXTREMELY risky site that’s marketed as something that’s not. So keep that in mind before investing in vapor ware that MAY or MAY NOT become reality.

    1. I strongly agree here. Same experience – figured my funding was lost, but saw them showing at an LA synth meet last month, and spoke to them. They are earnestly working to put it out to the best they can. It IS indeed frustrating that it seemed it was ready to go, and then it ghosted for 3-4 years, but onward and upward, lets get this thing to the finish line. There is a thread about the drama surrounding most of the workers bailing at a point, and the lead guy has stuck to it and is trying to put it out. I commend them for that. Yes, its been surpassed in the 4 years of products since, but so be it – i will still choose to enjoy it when it hopefully shows up in the mail someday.

  8. It’s alive, oh thank god. Better late than never, ill take it! All jabs aside, I commend Charlie for sticking to it.

    Speaking of never, lets see: Porcaro brothers documentary, Buchla doc……maybe Electronic Voyager is getting finished now? I have definitely sworn off funding anymore kickstarter synth docs for a long while.

  10. When you back a Kickstarter, you are not buying a product!

    You are investing in a startup project that has risk. It’s like putting your money in the stock market – there’s no guaranteed return.

    Or as Kickstarter puts it:

    “The fact that Kickstarter allows creators to take risks and attempt to create something ambitious is a feature, not a bug.”

    There are lots of electronic music products that would not exist, if not for Kickstarter. This wouldn’t be happening if people didn’t take risk and invest in them.

    If you can’t stomach the risk, don’t back a project and then gripe about it!

    1. Thats a dumb outlook. If a project doesn’t get delivered, people absolutely have the right and responsibility to gripe about it in order to expose a bad and irresponsible creator. They can’t ask for their money back, but they can and should speak with their voice. Otherwise the bad actor can put up a new campaign and defraud more people. Or in this case, encourage more preorders. I might have preordered the thing if I hadn’t read other comments.

    1. If you look at the ARP and Moog reissues that are suddenly being released, it looks more like 1976. So this arpeggiator is years ahead of its time.

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