Melotronica

The Melotronica is a modified melodica with sensors mounted on and inside the body of the instrument. The sensors control in real-time a Max patch that manipulates the acoustic sound and generates electronic timbres. The Melotronica is an hybrid interface that, providing a tight integration between the acoustic and electronic dimensions, allows for the simultaneous manipulation of the two.

The Melotronica is equipped with 30 custom pressure sensors located inside the body of the instrument. These are used to detect the keyboard activity. Various sliders, potentiometer and switches are placed on the body of the Melotronica using a custom support. A clip-on condenser microphone is also mounted on the instrument.

The information detected by the sensors is used either to directly control specific sound synthesis (e.g. CNMAT and Sound Design Toolkit packages) or to influence stochastic sonic process (see LFO Tutorials by Gregory Taylor).

The Melotronica was developed at STEIM.