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Electronic musician adapts prosthetic arm to control modular synthesiser

Bertolt Meyer has teamed up with KOMA Elektronik for something very special

An electronic musician has adapted a prosthetic arm in order to control a modular synthesiser.

Born without the lower half of his arm, musician Bertolt Meyer has adapted his myoelectric prosthetic arm in order to generate signals that could be adapted to control other electronic devices, including one of his modular synths.

Having teamed up with KOMA Elektronik, Meyer said, “Together with Christi from KOMA and my husband Daniel, I am in the process of building a device [which he calls SynLimb]. It attaches to my arm prosthesis instead of the prosthetic hand. The SynLimb converts the electrode signals that my prosthesis picks up from my residual limb into control voltages for controlling my modular synthesizer.”

Having traded his prosthetic hand for a DIY controller, Meyer can play music by thinking about it. Watch the musician explain the process and technology below.

Last month, Korg announced a remake of its iconic mono, semi-modular synth ARP2600.

Moog Music have recently announced the return of their hardware vocoder.