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First, I love the metal case, but it is too heavy. My use of the Altura involves not just waving in front of it, but optionally moving the Altura as I do so. A lighter case would really help and the next one I buy from you I will set that case aside and make another cardboard enclosure like in the original, which makes it light as a feather. I’ll put up a video demonstrating why but essentially I have some moving parts attached to the Altura and when I have the metal enclosure I have to use much more serious fastening hardware and when it’s really light I can for instance secure the Altura in its place with a rubber band.
Second, a sustain pedal that you can use to turn on/off latching for the (excellent) arpeggiator, that would be really beneficial. And BTW, having tried a few different arpeggiators now, I still think yours is really superior in one aspect; specifically that you can use the knobs to literally shape the arpeggio with precision, that is a superior feature and it would be great to have 16 note capacity for it but it is great as it is.
The Altura is a real winner here guys and I think you haven’t done it a great service by doing such a weak job of advertising and marketing, but the quality of the product has slowly been winning over people everywhere and you deserve congrats because I can buy your product from big retailers now. One of the big advantages this product has over a Theremin is that you can do a lot more with it. You literally can, should you desire, move the Altura around in a static environment and its sensors will pick up whatever is placed in front of it. Or you can, as I do, place the Altura in front of a couple of bicycle wheels and put bottlecaps in the spokes, and they will provide you a pattern of notes, making it sort of a mechanical sequencer. That has had some extraordinary results for me.
Merry Christmas, happy New Year.
Another one: there should be a simple option to turn either sensor on/off independently of the other one. For the left one you can just turn it to a function that you are not using and the pitch bend isn’t applied, but otoh if I want to keep the arpeggiator set at 3 or 4 I usually just put tape over the left sensors. Is there someplace in the sensor circuitry I can add a mechanical switch myself?
Coffeepal,
Thanks for the suggestions and kind words about the Altura.
I don’t think it ever crossed my mind that anyone would use the Altura the way you are using it, by waving it around. I can understand that it is too heavy now with the metal case for that type of use. I think we might still have some acrylic case parts for the MkII, if you are interested in building an acrylic case for it. It would be much lighter than metal, but it may not be as light as cardboard.
Adding a sustain pedal would be a pretty intensive mod to the Altura, mostly because I believe all the microcontroller pins are currently being used for other things. Besides that, it would take re-designing the chassis and PCB to add an extra jack for the footswitch. But that’s maybe something we can try if we do another version of this product later. Thank you for the suggestion.
To answer your question about turning off each sensor…it is possible to put a switch on the power rail of each sensor. That would give you the ability to turn each sensor on and off as you’d like. On the 4-wire cable going to each sensor, pin 1 on the PCB (the square pad) is connected to the 5V power rail. If you add a series switch on that wire, I think that should work. You may need to add a small capacitor to ground on the sensor side of the switch, depending on how the sensors respond to being instantly turned off. But you can experiment to see if you need it.
Thanks again for your suggestions and comments.
Take care.
-Brach
Oh thanks for the reply.
[q]I don’t think it ever crossed my mind that anyone would use the Altura the way you are using it, by waving it around. I can understand that it is too heavy now with the metal case for that type of use. I think we might still have some acrylic case parts for the MkII, if you are interested in building an acrylic case for it. It would be much lighter than metal, but it may not be as light as cardboard.[/q]
I don’t know that anybody has really put a whole lot of thought into ways that the Altura can be used that are unlike the original Theremin. The original operates off of the general inductance from anything around it, I guess, and the Altura relies on the amount of what, lidar waves that it bounces off of the surface of things, and triangulates between the two sensors? So treating it like an imitation Theremin is missing out on a lot of what it’s capable of. Behold:
I just really love the Altura. I tried a Moog Theremin a couple weeks ago, I liked it but I can’t say I was all that blown away. The Moog is the first Theremin I’ve seen that has the assistive pitch thing that is standard on the Altura, along with your choice of scale and key. I saw it with you guys first.
Really I think the Altura is a new departure based on the Theremin but is NOT an imitation of a Theremin. A lot of people have seen the cheap kits you can get on ebay to make an optical Theremin for like $30 or whatever. And now there are really cheap real Theremins coming from Asia, they have assistive pitch, a whole bunch of different voices built in, and actually it makes me want to buy one. But those cheap devices always get associated with the Altura just because it’s a kit instrument as well.
The above video is just having the Altura mounted next to a pair of in this instance wheelchair wheels, though bike wheels are easier. I put bottlecaps in the spokes at regular intervals. You spin the wheels in different directions and speeds and select your key and scale, and the result is in a lot of ways more pleasing than an ordinary sequencer, giving different numerical rhythms depending on how and where you place the bottle caps. And you put your hand opposite the Altura and “wave” and it will pick up the notes in between the spokes, all in your chosen scale and key.
Another very nice use, building on this, is to then send the signal from the Altura to a MIDI looper, which can capture any string of notes produced and save them as a loop in realtime, at which point you can quantize it to the current beat, or not. You can of course also use a DAW instead of a piece of dedicated hardware for looping, though I really am in love with this looper from Bastl. But with a DAW you can record all the MIDI easily enough.
I’m going to make a video for you demonstrating my preferred methods for using the Altura so far, I’m redoing it a little bit RN. You might could sell more devices if you do some more videos about the instrument and its usage and, as I said above, look at uses beyond copying what you would do with a Theremin, which is kinda limited and staid when you think about it. Going from an impedance detector to light sensors really set the idea free in my opinion, but the way it’s been set up and designed really is a brilliant little design. Cheers.
All in all, a lot of flexibility in how you generate sequences or arpeggios. he Altura is mounted on a drawer slide, that moves it near or close to the wheels without changing on two other axes:
https://i.imgur.com/2ZXThNt.jpg
Try that with a Theremin!
try that again
That is really cool!!!
Thank you so much for sharing! That’s a very good use of this new type of instrument. As a product designer/manufacturer, when developing something brand new, you often times have to show people what a product is good for and what it can do for them…to inspire them to try it themselves. I know the Altura has great potential, but we haven’t been very good at inspiring people with what it can do. So thank you for this video! I’d like to have our social media people post it, if it’s ok with you…?
I’m really looking forward to seeing your next video of your preferred methods for using it! Thanks again for your inspiration!
Take care.
-Brach
Brach, I think the combination of the Altura with a spoked wheel is such a powerful idea that it feels like an instrument in itself, I really think Steve Reich and Phil Glass would really love it, I can write a Koyaanaskazi standing on my head with this thing. Go ahead and use it or any of my other videos, I’ll also make you a better one.
Brach, I think the combination of the Altura with a spoked wheel is such a powerful idea that it feels like an instrument in itself, I really think Steve Reich and Phil Glass would really love it, I can write a Koyaanaskazi standing on my head with this thing. Go ahead and use it or any of my other videos, I’ll also make you a better one.
