Gilles Mustar (aka gilou) shared this short demo of MidiQuintet, a MIDI controller that’s inspired by the mid-century modern ‘Futuro’ house.
“My aim was to feel like conducting a quintet at the tip of my fingers,” notes Mustar. “Each joystick can be programmed to control any synth or virtual instrument. Here, each joystick controls the intensity/volume of one instrument and a filter (low pass, reverb, and drive). Clicks mute and unmute the instrument.”
The Futuro house, above is a prefabricated design, created by the Finnish architect Matti Suuronen in the late ’60s. The futuristic design is reminiscent of a flying saucer.
The brain of MidiQuintet is a Teensy microcontroller, which is inexpensive and has USB MIDI built-in. The body is 3D printed.
In the above demo, the synth pad sounds are from TAL-NoiseMaker and the melodic sound is from Ableton’s Operator. The granular piano and the choir are from Spitfire Audio’s free Labsirtual instruments and the low pass filter from Arturia.
Though the way that video was shot makes the playing of it look a little more awkward than would otherwise be, — it does illustrate a pretty nice little form factor.
It seems to make good use of the digits to provide some simultaneous control streams. 5 joysticks — for either hand, seems like a cool concept.
Not for me, but I applaud this kind of clever thinking.
Some strange voice inside of me is telling me that I’d like to know more about this.
Probably alien telepathy.
I just want one to fiddle with!! Like a very tactile fidget spinner 🙂
I just want to live in that house.