MIDI-Based Synth Controller With Strings

Rush Systems has been in touch to tell us about SHAPER which they describe as a new MIDI based synthesiser controller with strings. A spokesperson told us, "In live performance, it can do things that are either difficult, or impossible, on a keyboard or a guitar."

Rush Systems Ltd plans to start selling small quantities of this product to a local, specialist market in early 2027 but believes that it can be further developed, perhaps in partnership with other synth manufacturers, into a more mainstream product: a hybrid controller + synthesiser product with its own on-board sound generating electronics. They think that such a hybrid product has the potential to unlock a new class of mass-market musical instrument. Here's more details in their own words...

What is a Shaper?
At first glance, the Shaper's fretboard may look familiar to a guitar player. 
But that familiarity ends there!
The Shaper is a synthesiser controller which has strings instead of a keyboard.

The Shaper brings human expression to synth voices, creating spontaneous bends, slides, vibrato, glissando and portamento effects familiar to players of non-keyboard instruments such as the saxophone, slide guitar, trombone, fretless bass, violin, pedal-steel, clarinet, electric guitar etc... 

Also, each string on the Shaper can have its own MIDI channel. Which means that each string on the Shaper can have it's own, individual synth voice and, unlike a keyboard with a single, global pitch wheel, each string on the Shaper has its own, independent MIDI pitch bender.

But the Shaper doesn't just shape the pitch of each string as you play. With the Shaper's unique bend & sustain feature (if you bend the pitch of a note, you can take your hand off the string, and leave the note sustaining at the pitch to which you bent it), new possibilities in counterpoint, harmony and chord structure can be shaped, string by string, during live performance - in ways that are impossible on a keyboard or a guitar.

Whether you are a performer, a producer, a DJ who mixes things up, or you create fusions of music and sound F/X for stage or screen, imagine what the Shaper - a new way to make music - will do for you.

What will you sound like in the future?

Pricing and Availability:
TBA

More information:

• SHAPER