The D-Beam is a

Roland Roland (; ; or ''Rotholandus''; or ''Rolando''; died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the Matter of France. The historical Roland was mil ...

synthesizers interface that can control and manipulate sound and effects via the user's hand movements interacting with an infrared beam of light.

Background

The D-Beam was originally manufactured by Interactive Light, as a stand-alone unit, around 1996. It was then soon purchased by Roland Corporation, becoming trademarked and rebranded as D-Beam Controller for their own music equipment. It was then introduced on a larger scale through the

Roland MC-505 The Roland MC-505 is a groovebox conceived in 1998 as a combination of a MIDI controller, a music sequencer, a drum machine, and a desktop synthesizer with many synthesis features: arpeggiator, oscillators, and voltage-controlled filter, control ...

in 1998, was further incorporated into a large number of Roland's grooveboxes, workstations, keyboards, and digital samplers over the years. The controller is usually mounted in the equipment's panel facing upwards, and senses the performer's hand (or other body part) at a height of up to 15" (~40 cm) or so above the device. Although controlled in a similar manner to a

theremin The theremin (; originally known as the ætherphone, etherphone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox) is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer (who is known as a thereminist). It is named aft ...

, the operating principles are fundamentally different; the theremin uses

capacitive sensing In electrical engineering, capacitive sensing (sometimes capacitance sensing) is a technology, based on capacitive coupling, that can detect and measure anything that is conductive or has a dielectric constant different from air. Many types of sens ...

References

External links

What is D-Beam?

Circuit diagram for D-Beam components
{{Roland Roland synthesizers Gesture recognition