The Marimba, Illuminated

Lukas Ligeti brings an innovative instrument to ACO - the Marimba Lumina. Ligeti's work Labyrinth of Clouds features the Marimba Lumina in a "concerto of sorts" for electronic percussion, live electronics, and orchestra.

"Modeled somewhat after its acoustic namesake, Marimba Lumina is an electronic MIDI controller that brings an extended vocabulary and range of expression to the mallet instrument family. Marimba Lumina's playing surface includes a traditionally arrayed set of electronic bars and some (not so traditional) trigger pads and strips (reminiscent of those early ribbon controllers). The instrument is played with special foam covered mallets. Although primarily a controller, Marimba Lumina has a built in synthesizer, and can thus function as a complete instrument, ready to plug in and play.

"As you may have suspected, Marimba Lumina adds a few tricks to the usual capabilities of the marimba. User definable "zones" allow portions of the instrument to respond to gesture in different ways. Augmenting the potential for expressive control, Marimba Lumina responds to several new performance variables, including position along the length of the bars, dampening, and note density.

"And for those looking for more possibilities, Marimba Lumina can identify which of four color-coded mallets has struck a bar. This allows one to program different instrumental responses for each mallet, or to implement musical structures in which one mallet selects a course of action while others modify or implement it.

"Living up to its namesake, the Marimba Lumina has LED illumination built into every bar, strip, and pad. These LED's can show key status, edit configuration, controller status or pad selection. Used pedagogically, they can help a player follow a MIDI sequence or the actions of another player. And for icing on the cake, they make it easy to play in the dark!"

Source: http://www.buchla.com/mlumina/