The Poly.Touch Tangible Synthesizer Concept

Music’s marriage to the modern computer has opened the doors of creativity to a new world of musicians.  The ability to create, record and edit sound once carried a heavy cost– and can now be done for a few hundred bucks on your home PC or Mac.  But what is missing in this digital revolution?  Touch.  Music is best created in a tactile environment, one that is lost the world of a mouse and a keyboard.

In recent years, manual control surfaces have helped manage this problem, but none as creatively as this concept by industrial designer Mike Neumann.  The Poly.Touch Tangible Synthesizer Concept is a music synth engine with a revolutionary control surface that uses physical objects to create/control sound.  The formation and position of each block on the control surface shapes the sound like the knobs and faders of a classic synth controller.  Drop a few blocks on the surface, arrange and tweak them, you’ve created a new sound for your digital music environment.  While the Poly.Touch is still only a design concept, we’d love to get our hands on a working prototype…