IprePhonicbloom Wing Drum is a cute, portable electronic tongue drum Synthesizer from the developers of the Gecho Loopsynth.
The Gecho Loopsynth is a very compact, experimental synthesizer with various synthesis engines. Glo, the polyphonic whale I wrote about, is another sound machine that turns external audio into big ambient soundtracks on the go. All these come from the indie company Phonicbloom from Ireland.
His latest release is called Wing Drum and is an electronic tongue drum Synthesizer with different sound engines. As the first products, this instrument is also very lovingly built and equipped with many functions.
Phonicbloom Wing Drum
Wing Drum is a digital drum Synthesizer that is built into a tuneable electronic tongue drum instrument. The instrument has a round wooden shell (15cm / 6″ wide and 5cm / 2″ tall) and offers an interface with touch-sensitive pads. Nine in total, eight main wing pads, and one central for 9th note or damper. So you can play it softer and louder. This is made from fiberglass laminated with matte black polymer or white enamel with gold-plated metal elements, says the developer.
Additionally, an internal accelerometer measures the angle at which you hold your drum with which you can control various effects. Taking about the sounds i.e, the engine. Wing Drum has 6 voices of polyphony and offers switchable play modes. You can play sounds of a handpan, steel tongue drum, xylophone or glockenspiel.
The core is based on three different synth engines. They are based on samples, wavetables, and additive synthesis with additional DSP algorithms to pitch‑shift the sound where needed and add optional sound effects including reverb and delay. Plus, you can set up different scales, and micro-tune each pad individually with a saving functionality.
MIDI Controller
Alternatively, Wing Drum also works as a MIDI controller for your external synths. So you can expand the range of sound massively of it. The built‑in accelerometer acts as pitch bend / continuous controller depending on the axis of rotation. It also transmits velocity information.
And it’s super portable. It runs on USB power or with simple AA batteries
A very lovely and special instrument. I’m sure it will delight as many musicians as the Loopsynth.
Phonicbloom Wing Drum will be available at the end of this year for 249€ + shipping and VAT. It will be available in black and white and pre-orders will open from October 31st, 2021.
More information here: Phonicbloom
These peope make interesting little instruments. I have the “T-Ape” and it’s really crazy all the sounds you can get from such a small sized thing (it’s like a cassette).
Ya agree , ive got my eye on them, very nice indeed
I suppose it might make sense if you have no idea how to play a keyboard and no inclination to learn.
Looks nice though. :-/