Ciat-Lonbarde Tocante Bass Thyris Solar-Powered Touch Synthesizer

Built and designed by Peter Blasser from Ciat-Lonbarde, the Bass Thyris is a one of a kind solar powered (or dc 12v) triangule wave synthesizer with built in speaker that will melt your heart.

The Tocante line of musical instruments is "about" and "touching" the materials of electronics. Each touchpad represents a pitch according to industry "preferred numbers," chosen by old wartime engineers for non-musical purposes. Here they form a unique and haunting musical scale, not unlike that of a gamelan or the neutral intervals of Persian music. Beyond these base pitches, three golden sandrodes flank each touchpad; touching these androgynous nodes yields intermodulation, pitch and timbral shifts, and emergent chaotic masses. The instruments come in three flavors: thyris the triangle, bistab the square, and phashi the circle. The oscillators sound like a bowed string, a most powerful clarinet, and a howling serene whistle, respectively. Each responds to touch differently. Solar panels charge the onboard batteries, that power the oscillators and a speaker. They are the perfect self-contained instrument for nightly music at the campground.

Bass Thyris is that instrument, but using capacitors a decade lower, or about three octaves and a third, so that it reaches into haptic (beat patterns) range.