IT STARTS WITH A DREAM
At BLL instruments we are fans of synthesizers, their vintage sound, classic and modern at the same time, their ability to mix several timbres. We love the musical journey that transports us while listening to each new presets.
We also like guitar and bass. Standing or sitting, in your studio or on stage, playing on guitar or bass is this tremendous energy, this way in which the intensity of the playing is in total connection with the music you want to create. A sweet ballad, a melodious arpeggio, a hell of a bass line, a stratospheric lead, an awesome riff.
What if we could express all that but with a great synth sound ?
The dream came true and even more !
A MODERN SYNTH PLAYED LIKE A GUITAR OR A BASS
Elyra is played with the typical gestures of playing guitar and bass and all the energy that comes from it. You play with your whole body.
There are two strumming aera for strings, one dedicated to back and forth and another dedicated to bass and arpeggios.
Elyra is designed to be played by both righ-handed and left-handed people.
You can also play it placed on a table or on your knees like a groove box.
A POWERFUL AND UNIQUE COMPOSITION TOOL
With up to 16 voices polyphony, spread across 16 instruments/layers and with is powerful sequencer, Elyra is more than a groovebox, it is a composition tool.
You can have one instrument with 16 voices or 16 instruments with one voice and everything in between.
Because Elyra is battery powered, you can carry it anywhere with you and play for several hours.
You can play and sequence all your other instruments via MIDI port.
A SOUND ENGINE MADE FOR US BY KODAMO
At the core of Elyra there is a powerful and beautiful sound engine created for us by Kodamo.
It is a virtual analog engine based on substractive synthesis with just enough FM synthesis to offer a vast sound territory.
It has many parameters to sculpt and create a unique sound.
THEY TALK ABOUT ELYRA
ELYRA IN DETAILS
ELECTRONICS AND WOOD
Elyra is made of electronics and wood.
The electronic parts are designed in France and comply with environmental standards and in particular RoHS.
The body of the instrument is made of wood. It is cut and assembled in France. The wood is only chosen from sustainable or recycled sources.
Elyra is built to last.
RAISED TOUCH BUTTONS
All Elyra buttons are touch sensitive pads made up of a slightly raised area allowing the user to feel physical feedback.
This is capacitive sensor technology which offers an extremely fast response time of 2 ms.
There are 5 distinct areas on the main panel:
- the fretboard composed of 4 * 12 pads
- the strumming area separated into two types, A and B
- two assignable sliders
- an OLED screen with its wheel and its 8 contextual buttons
GUITAR / BASS MODE
At first you need a double trig to play a note in Guitar or Bass mode: the hand on the fretboard selects the note to be played, and the other hand uses one of the two strumming areas.
Each one of the four strings has its own two strumming areas.
The strumming area A, is made of a long and very thin relief pad. It is ideal for playing back and forth on one or more strings.
the strumming area B, is a double pad surrounded by holes in the main layer, it allows both bass type playing and is ideal for playing arpeggios.
Elyra retains the essential subtleties of guitar playing, when a note has just been played you can also, like in guitar, slide to another note, or do a Pull-off or a Hammer-on without using the strumming area again.
You can use the slider with your thumb to bend the notes.
Elyra can be tuned according to your needs. there are basic tunings, like the first 4 strings of a guitar E, A, D, G, or any open tuning, or like a Ukulele.
You choose the root notes of each string, and the choice is specific to each track in one project.
Elyra is an ambidextrous instrument, left-handed people have their own strumming zone on the other side of the instrument.
KEYS MODE
Elyra can also be played on a table or on your knees.
If you can always choose the guitar trig mode with the use of the strumming area, you can also use the fretboard as groovebox pads.
The note is triggered by a single press on the corresponding pad.
The number of notes that can be played at the same time depends on the polyphony settings of the current track.
Several scales are available: 4 octaves for major or minor scale or 2 octaves for a chromatic scale on two lines.
In this picture you can observe two and a half octaves distributed over two lines.
CHORD MODE
Elyra has two convenient chord modes:
Chord Mode 1
You select the key then the scale and you have the seven chords corresponding to the seven degrees of the scale.
In C major for example, the 1st degree chord, CM, is located on pad 1.
The second degree Dm is located on pad 2 and so on.
Chord Mode 2
This mode allows you to choose more complex chords with only 2 fingers by choosing the root notes and the chord including Major, Major 7, minor, minor7, sus2, sus4, add9, etc.
The triggering of each note of the chord is done with the strumming areas A and B.
MULTI TRACK and MULTI LAYERS
Elyra is a multi-timbral instrument with great flexibility in voices assignment.
You have 16 voices polyphony to distribute over a maximum of 16 tracks with a combination of tracks and layers.
For example, you can have the following distribution :
- track number 1, 4 voices * 2 layers
- track number 2, 1 voice * 1 layer
- track number 3, 1 voices * 3 layers
- track number 4, 4 voices * 1 layer
Or you can have 16 tracks with one voice each.
Each project has its own distribution of voices, tracks and layers.
A MULTI TRACK SEQUENCER
Elyra has a multi tracks sequencer.
999 projects/128 patterns for each project /10 songs chaining / 256 steps for each track in one pattern.
A project is the equivalent of a song. It contains up to 128 patterns.
The pattern is the recording environment, Elyra allows you to record in live mode or step rec mode.
For each track the pattern contains a maximum of 256 steps.
A song mode allows you to chain patterns in playsback mode. Elyra has 10 slots.
AN INSTRUMENT MADE TO INSPIRE
The magic of a synthesizer is this ability to create a multitude of sound timbres.
With nearly a hundred parameters, KODAMO has designed for us a virtual analog engine based on subtractive synthesis with just enough FM synthesis to offer a vast sound territory.
You have 256 factory presets, and up to 1024 user presets, as well as all the presets saved in each of your projects.
THE SOUND ENGINE
Elyra has two oscillators with classic waveforms, sine, saw, triangle and pulse and 10 other waveforms.
Each oscillator has its own ADSR-type amplitude envelope but also a pitch envelope (perfect for drums).
Oscillator 2 can act as a modulator for oscillator 1 allowing the creation of FM sound. The feedback level and and the different waveforms of oscillator 2 gives a special character to the FM capability of the sound engine.
The oscillators then enter a 2 or 4 poles resonant Lowpass/high pass filter which has its own ADSR envelope.
Each low pass filter has its own sound advantages, the 4 poles has a very dark sound while the 2 poles is brighter.
The oscillators and the filter can be modulated by the 2 LFOs which have speed adjustment, modulation depth, action delay and selection of the phase of the LFO. They can be synchronized to the BPM. The LFOs also modulate all effects parameters.
There are 3 master effects, with specific send settings for each track. The first effect is a distortion/overdrive. The second effect is a Bitcruch or a Chorus. The third effect is a Stereo Delay or Reverb.
EASY USER INTERFACE
When you have more than a hundred parameters for the sound engine, how to fight against menu diving ? With clear and easy editing.
The upper part of the OLED screen contains two lines of 4 parameters corresponding to the two lines of 4 buttons located under the screen. Once a parameter is selected, you can use the dial wheel. The dial wheel reacts to the speed of rotation.
The back button allows you to return to the previous page and wake up the screen when it has turned off in power saving mode.
The reading direction of the screen changes depending on how the user holds Elyra, slung over the shoulder or table top.
In the video down below, our demonstrator plays with the LowPass filter and resonance.
SPECIFICATIONS
| Fretboard | 12*4 capacitive pads (2ms latency) |
| Sound Engine | Virtual analog + FM |
| Polyphony | 16 voices shared by all tracks |
| Multitimbrality | up to 16 instruments/layers |
| Presets | 256 factory presets |
| 1024 user presets | |
| 16 presets per project | |
| Oscillators | 15 waveforms including sine,triangle, saw, pulse and noise |
| pitch envelope | |
| amp envelope ADSR + delay | |
| FM | envelope modulator (osc 2) + feedback level |
| Filter | filter type : HPF, LPF |
| filter slope : 2 poles -12dB/oct, 4 poles -24d B/Oct | |
| envelope ADSR | |
| LFO | 2 LFOs, 5 waveform, speed depth, delay, retrig position, sync to BPM |
| Effects | 3 master effects with individual send by tracks |
| effect 1 : distortion/overdrive | |
| effect 2 : bitcruch or chorus | |
| effect 3 : stereo delay or reverb | |
| Sequencer | a pattern = up to 256 steps per track |
| 128 patterns per project | |
| max 999 project by SD card | |
| Power Supply | 5v USB bus power supply |
| Memory | SD card |
| Size and Weight | |
| Width | 435 mm – 17 – ¹/₈ inches |
| Depth | 170 mm – 6 – ¹¹/₁₆ inches |
| Height | 40 mm – 1 – ³⁷/₆₄ inches |
| Weight | 1.2 kg / 2 lbs 12,3 oz |