AlphaSphere (instrument)

AlphaSphere is an electronic musical instrument that was designed and developed by nu desine, an award winning company[1] based in Bristol, UK. The primary concept of the AlphaSphere is to increase the level of expression available to electronic musicians,[2] by allowing for the playing style of a musical instrument. Even before the product had been fully developed it had appeared at many events worldwide including the NAMM Show, Musikmesse, TEDx conferences, and the Future Everything Festival,[3] and received press from popular organisations such as Sound on Sound, BBC, Wired and MusicRadar.[4] There are currently two different AlphaSphere models - the nexus series and the elite series.

History

The initial concept of AlphaSphere was conceived while company founder Adam Place was studying at the Nagoya University of Arts in Japan where he produced an initial prototype.[5] In September 2010 Adam was commissioned by Media Sandbox, a development funding scheme which is part of Bristol's Watershed subsidiary iShed, to further develop his concept by researching into smart materials.[6] This spawned the birth of nu desine which soon developed into a team that specialise in music technology, electronics engineering, product design, software development and user interface design.[7]

In April 2012 nu desine announced they had started taking pre-orders for a limited edition elite series AlphaSphere,[8] with the first batch of elite AlphaSphere's being shipped in March 2013.[9] In July 2013 nu desine announced the nexus series,[10] the standard version of the AlphaSphere. This was shortly followed by the instrument being available in musical instrument retail stores in both USA and Japan, and then in November 2013 it became available to UK and Europe through the AlphaSphere website.[11]

The AlphaSphere is currently being used by several high-profile artists such as Talvin Singh and Enter Shikari.[12]

Features

The nexus series is the standard AlphaSphere model. Characteristics of this model are:

Limited Edition Elite Model

The elite series is the high-end AlphaSphere model. It comes with all the features of the AlphaSphere nexus, plus the following extra features:

See also

References

  1. "Musical 'football' wins export award". BBC. Retrieved 2012-05-13.
  2. "New Instrument Aims To Put Performance Back Into Electronic Music". Tonall. Retrieved 2011-08-08.
  3. "nu desine Events". nu desine. Retrieved 2012-05-04.
  4. "AlphaSphere Press". nu desine. Retrieved 2012-05-04.
  5. "AlphaSphere Futuristic Musical Instrument". TokyoTek. Retrieved 2012-05-13.
  6. "DCMS - Bristol: the UK's answer to Silicon Valley". Clare Reddington. Archived from the original on 6 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-08-08.
  7. "About nu desine". nu desine. Retrieved 2011-08-08.
  8. "Pre-order AlphaSphere elite series". nu desine. Retrieved 2012-05-04.
  9. "elite series ships". nu desine. Retrieved 2013-03-16.
  10. "AlphaSphere nexus – addition to product line". nu desine. Retrieved 2013-11-08.
  11. "AlphaSphere nexus hits Europe". nu desine. Retrieved 2012-11-21.
  12. "AlphaSphere Artists". nu desine. Retrieved 2012-11-21.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, March 26, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.