I just really love the Altura. I tried a Moog Theremin a couple weeks ago, I liked it but I can’t say I was all that blown away. The Moog is the first Theremin I’ve seen that has the assistive pitch thing that is standard on the Altura, along with your choice of scale and key. I saw it with you guys first.
Really I think the Altura is a new departure based on the Theremin but is NOT an imitation of a Theremin. A lot of people have seen the cheap kits you can get on ebay to make an optical Theremin for like $30 or whatever. And now there are really cheap real Theremins coming from Asia, they have assistive pitch, a whole bunch of different voices built in, and actually it makes me want to buy one. But those cheap devices always get associated with the Altura just because it’s a kit instrument as well.
The above video is just having the Altura mounted next to a pair of in this instance wheelchair wheels, though bike wheels are easier. I put bottlecaps in the spokes at regular intervals. You spin the wheels in different directions and speeds and select your key and scale, and the result is in a lot of ways more pleasing than an ordinary sequencer, giving different numerical rhythms depending on how and where you place the bottle caps. And you put your hand opposite the Altura and “wave” and it will pick up the notes in between the spokes, all in your chosen scale and key.
Another very nice use, building on this, is to then send the signal from the Altura to a MIDI looper, which can capture any string of notes produced and save them as a loop in realtime, at which point you can quantize it to the current beat, or not. You can of course also use a DAW instead of a piece of dedicated hardware for looping, though I really am in love with this looper from Bastl. But with a DAW you can record all the MIDI easily enough.
I’m going to make a video for you demonstrating my preferred methods for using the Altura so far, I’m redoing it a little bit RN. You might could sell more devices if you do some more videos about the instrument and its usage and, as I said above, look at uses beyond copying what you would do with a Theremin, which is kinda limited and staid when you think about it. Going from an impedance detector to light sensors really set the idea free in my opinion, but the way it’s been set up and designed really is a brilliant little design. Cheers.