Brooklyn EXPO 2026: Hop Tactile Instrument

Saima from Hop gave us a look at Tactile,  an open-source standalone synth from Hop, developed from work in classrooms at Daniel's Music Foundation, a nonprofit working with disabled musicians.

Tactile is wireless, includes its own speaker and comes in light and dark colourways. The playing surface is pressure sensitive and has nine zones. The edges play a major scale, while the centre acts as a random sequencer. Additional areas control half-step bend, octave bend and a single-stage looper.

Patch changes use physical texture pads, with each pad linking a tactile surface to a matching sound character, including smoother and more bit-crushed responses. Key cards transpose the instrument; it defaults to A and changes key when a card is inserted.

Tactile is available from Hop's website. A separate Tactile Sidekick is in prototype and adds CV and MIDI interfacing for Eurorack and controller use.

More Info: https://hop-sounds.com