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Zeppelin Design Labs ALTURA User Manual

Theremin midi controller
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  • Page 2: Table Of Contents

    PRESETS......................... 26 © 2019 ZEPPELIN DESIGN LABS. NO PART OF THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR. ZEPPELIN DESIGN LABS TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DAMAGE OR HARM THAT MAY COME TO ANYONE OR ANYTHING THROUGH THEIR PRODUCTS. THE ALTURA SOFTWARE IS DISTRIBUTED UNDER THE CREATIvE COMMONS SHARE-ALIKE / ATTRIBUTION / NON-COMMERCIAL LICENSE.

  • Page 3: Quick Start Guide

    (By default, the Altura MkII transmits on Channel 1. You will learn how to change this shortly.) 5. TURN ON YOUR ALTURA MkII Press the red power button on the back of the Altura. If you built a card stock case, be careful how you squeeze your theremin; you don’t want to crush the cabinet.
  • Page 4 . The functions are 1 - 8 listed in the table below, and on a label on the bottom of your Altura. After the table there’s a brief description of each function, with much more to learn in the Reference Manual.
  • Page 5 Set the DATA FAR knob to about 10 or 20. Set the DATA NEAR knob to around 80. Play your Altura MkII with a Macchiato Mini Synth and you will hear that spooky theremin sound! Setting Time = 0 will turn Portamento off.
  • Page 6 Select and Min Since this mode does not trigger notes, use it with a drone synth or a sequencer. The Altura MkII defaults to CC#’s 85 & 86 on startup, which are undefined. Consult the CC# chart of your synthesizer to select suitable controller numbers. This function is not recommended for use with the Macchiato Mini Synth.
  • Page 7 . These 1 - 12 are the available scales as listed on the label on the bottom of your Altura. The Altura MkII plays a wide variety of scales. See the Reference Manual for more details. Playing your scales was never so easy! 11.

  • Page 8: Reference Manual

    MIDI protocol (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). Thus any sound that your synthesizer can make the Altura MkII can control. Further, you can determine the key and scale (mode) in which to play. You can even build an eight-step arpeggio and save your work in a bank of presets.

  • Page 9: How It Works

    Many MIDI devices do not conform to the General MIDI specification. These devices will not necessarily respond to the Altura MkII as described herein. In these cases, you may need to fiddle a bit with your synthesizer to get it to behave. Alternatively, you can route your Altura MkII controller...

  • Page 10: Feature List

    FEATURE LIST REAR PANEL 1. 9v DC Power Input 2. Power On/Off 3. MIDI Out TOP PANEL 1. Power On Indicator 2. 3-Digit Display 3. Left Distance Sensor – MIDI Control Functions 4. Right Sensor – MIDI Pitch 5. DATA FAR Adjust 6.
  • Page 11 ON THE PCB 1. Battery Holder 2. ISP Header...

  • Page 12: Rear Panel Features

    2. POWER ON/OFF Push the red button to switch the Altura MkII on. The red LED on top lights up and the display does a little dance, followed by a letter and number, indicating the current key and scale. Push the button again to switch it off.

  • Page 13: Top Panel Features

    The distance sensors are ultrasonic ranging devices. One of those eyeballs is a speaker, the other is a microphone. Several times a second, the speaker emits a high-frequency chirp; the microphone listens for an echo. If it fails to hear an echo before a preset timeout, the sensor returns a null value. The Altura...

  • Page 14: Left Distance Sensor - Midi Control Functions

    In Functions 1 - 5 and 8, the right sensor transmits Note-On messages, thus controlling pitch. Whenever the Altura MkII detects a new note to send, it first turns off the current note by transmitting a “Note On, velocity 0”message.

  • Page 15: Data Far And Near Select

    See “10, 11. Octave Near and Octave Far Select” on page 22. You can set the key and scale in which the Altura MkII will play. See “11. Key (Root Note) Select” on page 20, and “12. Scale (Mode) Select” on page 21.

  • Page 16: Midi Function Select

    . This changes the size of the Neutral 0 - 127 Zone that separates the Bend Up zone from the Bend Down zone. On startup, the Altura MkII defaults to Function 1: Pitch Bend, and the neutral zone will default based on the physical position of the DATA NEAR knob.

  • Page 17: Function 2: Modulation

    The Altura MkII lacks the resolution to use the Pitch Bend to produce precise, subtle vibrato effects characteristic of the original theremin. Use the Modulation effect for this instead. FUNCTION 2: MODULATION Function 2 emulates the behavior of the Mod Wheel on a conventional MIDI controller. It transmits a value from 0 –...

  • Page 18: Function 5: Portamento

    For pleasant melodic playing, use Time values of about 10 - 25. The Altura MkII sounds most like a theremin at Time values around 30. Set the DATA FAR knob to the slowest effect you want to hear, and DATA NEAR knob to the fastest. See the section “PRESETS”...

  • Page 19: Function 7: Channel Select

    For example, Note -5 is the same as Note 5, but an octave apart. Note 1 is the note your hand is playing, -1 is an octave below, and 1. is an octave above. With the Altura in “THR” mode, you can change the scale on the fly. Moving between scales with different numbers of notes may yield peculiar results.

  • Page 20: Key (Root Note) Select

    Altura will fit into the tap interval. For example, regardless of how many notes there are in your pattern, if the multiplier is set to 2, then when you set the tap time, the Altura will play back two notes per beat. So set the multiplier to the value that is easiest to tap! The 3 is there to help you set the tempo for patterns with three or six notes.

  • Page 21: Scale (Mode) Select

    The SCALE knob selects from one of a dozen pre-programmed scales, or modes. These scales are listed on a label on the bottom of your Altura MkII for easy reference. We have selected a variety of common and not-so-common scales, including a couple of pentatonic scales popular with guitarists. We have also included the Chromatic scale, which includes all twelve notes in the Western scale.

  • Page 22: Octave Near And Far Select

    10, 11. OCTAvE NEAR AND FAR SELECT The Altura MkII has a range of eight octaves (1 – 8), covering MIDI note numbers 12 (C0) through 119 (B8). (The original theremin had a range of about 5-1/2 octaves.) You do not have access to the lowest subsonic tones, or the few highest squealing notes.

  • Page 23: Preset Increment / Arpeggio Setup Toggle

    PRESET INCREMENT / ARPEGGIO SETUP TOGGLE In Functions 1 - 7, touch and release this button (▲) to display the current preset number. Press it repeatedly to increment through preset numbers 0 - 20. To read from or write to the selected preset, use button 5, Preset Recall / Save.

  • Page 24: On The Pcb

    ON THE PCB Lift the lid off your Altura’s acrylic case, or open the top of your card stock case, and take a look inside. 1. BATTERY HOLDER Use a high-quality 9v DC alkaline battery, like Energizer. Do not waste your money on cheap batteries! You will regret it.

  • Page 25: Programming The Altura Mkii

    Your Altura MkII left the Lab with the articulation set to 30, which we think gives a good balance of stability and responsiveness.

  • Page 26: Presets

    Your Altura MkII contains 21 presets, numbered 0 - 20. They are preprogrammed to demonstrate the variety of the Altura’s capabilities. How they sound in your setup depends heavily on the synthesizer you use. Remember that many synthesizers do not implement Portamento effects. With these synthesizers, Function 5 - Portamento will have no effect.

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