The Chromaplane is a new electronic musical instrument developed in collaboration between the Berlin-based instrument and Eurorack module maker KOMA Elektronik and the music group Passepartout Duo.
With its novel synthesis and interface design, the Chromaplane has made waves with a very successful Kickstarter campaign which is running until August 25th, so there are still four more days to back the project!
The Chromaplane is played with electromagnetic pickup coils that react to movement over the three-dimensional "plane" (composed of ten electromagnetic fields) of the instrument, making for a novel playing experience that is more fluid and gestural than your average synth keyboard. There are a variety of tuning options and an analog lowpass filter and delay for further sound shaping options, as well as an external input and envelope follower output.
KOMA themselves describe the instrument in the following way on the Kickstarter page:
"Hidden in the world around us is a continually buzzing environment of electromagnetic fields — our cellphones and laptops are constantly emitting chaotic clicks and hums. The Chromaplane is an instrument that was designed to live in that hidden electromagnetic world with an intentional musicality.
The instrument constantly emits a cloud of electromagnetic fields from its surface, waiting to be detected by the musician. These fields are emitted by carefully sculpted flat copper spirals in an isomorphic layout. By moving two electromagnetic pickups across the surface, you can unlock a universe of sound — from ethereal drones to lively melodies, quirky bass lines, and distorted noise.
The ten visible dots on the instrument's surface represent the center of each field — the closer your pickup is to the center of a field, the louder its voice will be heard."
Intrigued by the instrument, we have reached out to KOMA's Christian Zollner and Passepartout Duo's Nicoletta Favari and Christopher Salvito to ask some further questions about the Chromaplane.
How did you first get into designing instruments?
KOMA Elektronik [K]: Already at the age of six years I repaired the bunk beds on our vacation in Italy, because instead of a football I brought with me a set of screwdrivers. At 14 years old I got my first synthesizer (a Virus B), and with 16 my first two Eurorack modules — an MFB Triple Osc and Doepfer A-120 Lowpass filter — for Christmas. I had so much fun with just these two modules for almost a year before I wanted to get some more modules. Then I saw the prices of Eurorack modules and figured I needed another plan.
I then discovered Doepfer's DIY page, looking at that page, thinking to myself "This is literally the same three symbols connected in different ways — I can understand that!". And so I started DIYing my own modules, while also getting into circuit bending and building guitar pedals for myself and friends. It really just intensified from there on, and in my mid 20s I founded KOMA Elektronik after moving to Berlin. So I'm self-taught, for that matter.
You've also designed custom instruments for other musicians like Hildur Gudandottir — is that something you also offer for other people?
K: I do in fact design custom instruments for other musicians but the Halldorophone (played famously by Hildur) is not my design — although I have contributed to its design and also designed the electronics for some of the earlier versions until 2018) — it is designed by my friend Haldor Ulfarsson. I have made bespoke instruments for other musicians, e.g. a feedbacking drum for Sam Slater and also a laser microphone. Currently, we're building a bespoke feedbacking Cello for Chloe Lula. I've also built the SynLimb for my friend Bertold Meyer which turns his prosthetic arm into a possibility to plug himself directly into a modular synthesizer and create CV directly through the prosthetic.
I like that type of custom work, because while I love to design instruments that many musicians and producers use and enjoy, there is always an economic component to nearly all aspects of the design and build process. This economic aspect is almost absent in custom builds and I have a much greater freedom in choosing components, user interface features and the general build procedure. It's really a large difference to design for one, or for several thousand units of something. I do enjoy that a lot and want to do more custom builds in the future.
Talking about the Chromaplane: how does the communication between the electromagnetic pickups and the analog synthesis engine work on a technical level?
Passepartout Duo [PD]: If you’ve ever played around with electromagnetic pickups, you pretty quickly realize that most electronic devices “buzz” — they are accidental oscillators. The Chromaplane is a device that treats this with some musical intentionality, creating a cloud of fields around its surface. The pickups themselves are amplified in a typical way, and are designed to listen to the Chromaplane's fields, but can of course pick up fields from other devices too.
Is the signal from the pickups converted into control voltage?
PD: The signal from the pickups generally stays as audio — we think that is one of the most beautiful things about the instrument, that there’s no "encoding" or "decoding", but just a pure electromagnetic field being heard and picked up.
The instrument does have an envelope follower which can be used for CV control though, and that does convert the pickup signal into control voltage for use with other gear.
The ten oscillators are all square wave oscillators — why that waveform in particular for this instrument?
PD: After some years of experimentation, it seems to us that the sound a coil wants to make is a square wave, or at least something very harmonically rich. The end sound is far from a pure square wave though, due to the way it’s treated: the electromagnetic fields are filtered both by the enclosure, the internal analog circuitry, as well as the frequency response of the pickups, that all contribute to give it its own unique flavor.
The Chromaplane also fits nicely as the start of the signal chain, and so starting with a more harmonically rich signal that can then be further processed gives us a bit more to work with.
What was the inspiration for the filter circuit?
PD: The filter topography is a hybrid between four pole and two pole designs — it has the characteristic of a two pole filter in the resonance path (a fatter resonant peak), with the sharper slope of the four pole filter. Because the filter is modulated at audio rates for an FM/Ring modulation-esque effect, we chose the topography to support that concept. For us, analog circuits are all about character, and so we didn’t see much value in going for a totally "clean" filter design.
Is the delay an analog BBD delay circuit?
PD: The delay is a PT2399 — similar to the filter, we wanted something that would keep the instrument accessible, while also providing some textural character.
The Chromaplane is a collaboration with Passepartout Duo. How did you meet and working with them?
K: It was shortly before Christmas 2021 that an email by the Duo reached me. They introduced me to the Chromaplane and expressed interest in having someone produce and sell it in collaboration with them.
This is actually not an unusual event in my inbox, but their instrument immediately stuck out to me because of the out-of-the-box approach to creating sounds. It was immediately obvious that this had been tested in the real world for a long time and re-iterated a few times. The high-build quality and usability of the instrument were awe-inducing. So I replied, and it all unfolded from there.
In the following period, we ping-ponged ideas, tried variations of prototypes, frontpanel design, circuits, came up with new features, ditched old ones, and so on. We have now reached a point in this design that we are all very pleased with.
Is there a connection or a common design ethos between the Chromaplane and your previous Eurorack modules?
K: There are definitely two strong points of connection here: The experimental and unusual way of creating sounds on one side, and how you as a creator experience the interaction with the instrument itself on the other. It almost feels like the Duo pitched a “future KOMA instrument” to us. The Chromaplane fits so well into our understanding of music electronics and it really lines up with our values.
At KOMA we love to seek out new ways to interact with gear and experimental approaches on how to interact with sounds. The Chromaplane fits that description perfectly.
Can you say something about the additional Max For Live device that is being developed to work with the Chromaplane?
PD: We’re still exploring in which directions we can bring the Max For Live device, but at the moment, we have a digital synth voice which is generated based on the audio from two pickups. It’s essentially a duophonic voice created from the envelope and detected pitch of the Chromaplane — we wanted to focus on some of the options which aren’t currently possible on the instrument like FM and more additive approaches (sine waves with wave folders for example).
In addition to that, it’s also currently possible to get MIDI (note on/off), CC (volume envelope) and pressure from those two voices and send them to another MIDI track. We’re currently working on building out the native synth voice, as MIDI does propose some clear limitations in terms of translating the high resolution of the Chromaplane’s expressivity into a digital setting, but it also provides some cool idiosyncratic results.
Do you feel like digital integration such as this can enhance an analog instrument?
PD: The digital integration is about giving people an easy starting point to think about ways they can work within the limitations the Chromaplane proposes — we love working in Ableton, and have been using the two instruments together, so we thought it would be nice to share this tool based on our own experiences.
We have tons of ideas for how to continue deepening what we started with the Chromaplane here, and we think there’s a lot more left to explore.
K: I don’t find it helpful to differentiate between analog and digital technology for music electronics. To begin with, it’s very hard to even define the two terms properly. Any type of instrument should make sense and give you an experience that suits your needs. I also feel like many musicians and producers don’t care the least bit if their gear is analog, digital or a mixture of both. It simply has to work for them and make sense. So in that sense I wouldn’t say the Max For Live integration “enhances” the Chromaplane, rather, it’s another facade of its user experience, which centers around exploring sounds through hidden signals.
Do you feel like there are more things to explore in regards to electromagnetics in electronic music instruments?
K: I think it's important to put less weight on the technology itself. To me and many others, it makes absolutely no difference what the technological details behind an instrument are. Sure, an “electromagnetic synthesizer” is a very cool idea! We would not go ahead with the Chromaplane if we weren’t in love with that concept and its design. But actually almost everything is electromagnetic in our world: any wire that has a current running across it, visible light, molecules that make up matter, and so on. We’re usually not in awe of that — although we could, to be in awe of our world a little more.
I’ve seen so many people have their minds absolutely blown when they try the Chromaplane for the first time. But that is not because of the actual technological concept behind it — which is hard to grasp for people — but how this concept translates into a physical, physiological, biocreative experience. We’ve all hit keys, turned knobs, moved sliders, maybe touched electrodes. But have you navigated through a 3D space of actual, concrete sounds with your hands yet? That’s the main point for me.
Regardless, utilizing electromagnetic fields for musical purposes is a little explored area in the world of synthesizers and music electronics, so I’m sure there are topics to be discovered that we can’t apprehend yet.
In what other or additional directions do you think this concept could be taken?
PD: We’re already buzzing with lots of different ideas on this subject. We have been prototyping many of the features that people have imagined during the campaign. While the Max For Live device can give a taste of what a more digitally focused approach can create, integrating them directly into the device would provide more robust and interesting control, as well as a lot of flexibility. We have no timeline for this yet, though.
K: I would love to see the concept of a “sound cloud” that can be picked up have more applications. I think it’s a very cool way of experiencing sounds, of creating and sculpting sounds in a 3D space that's right in front of you, yet invisible. It’s an entirely new way for your brain to “think" sound. We are really used to looking at keys, knobs, sliders, displays, even electrodes and immediately have some concept connected to these features in our head. But with an electromagnetic field, any information being sent needs to first be discovered and experienced before you can know what it will reveal.
Has the feedback you have received along the way influenced any of the design decisions?
PD: We had a spectacular little meeting with Hainbach back in 2022, where we went over all the details of the instrument over some hours — it was super helpful. He definitely helped us confidently add the envelope follower and external input for example. Because we’ve also often gotten consistent feedback from audiences after our concerts, we’re always reconsidering what the instrument is supposed to be. We’re really excited about thinking of the Chromaplane not as a single monolithic instrument, but perhaps a family of different approaches for different types of people.
K: As always, I try to share any prototype with as many bright minds as I can. Any instrument made by KOMA is always the product of a collaboration of many people working together. It’s impossible to not be influenced by the opinions of others. The key is to filter that feedback and to distill it down.
Do you feel like Kickstarter is an important platform to make the development of more experimental / ambitious projects like this possible?
K: Kickstarter has definitely worked out very well for us in the past. The Field Kit and Field Kit FX were two extremely successful campaigns and the people at Kickstarter really helped us achieve that. I am very thankful for their continued support. For a small, boutique company like KOMA Elektronik, such platforms can help a lot to bring first production runs to life and better gauge the interest, especially if the idea is experimental and novel. So, while I wouldn’t say that it’s impossible to release such products without these platforms, they definitely help with realizing first production runs in a transparent and thoughtful way.
Also, the Chromaplane campaign has been quite successful — in your opinion, what is the key to running a successful synth kickstarter?
K: To start with, I think not all products are a good fit for a Kickstarter campaign. If you look around the electronic music gear history on Kickstarter, you can almost see the line that separates successful from not-so-successful projects. For example, I would never consider a Kickstarter for a single Eurorack module or another product in an already existing, conventional product line. If you look at successful audio technology Kickstarter projects, they all share similarities in their concepts — there needs to be a “novel” and “innovative” angle to it for it to be a good fit.
And then, apart from the product / concept itself, the campaign design is important obviously. What that means is really different from company to company and project to project. But in my humble opinion, clear communication and transparency are the key factors to create trust between backers and creators. Top that with a great campaign video, and there’s your successful campaign!
You can find out more about KOMA Elektronik over at their website, more about Passepartout Duo over at theirs, and more about Chromaplane on its Kickstarter page.