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Tactile sensor used to control synthesizers From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A ribbon controller is a tactile sensor used to control synthesizers. It generally consists of a resistive strip that acts as a potentiometer. Because of its continuous control, ribbon controllers are often used to produce glissando effects.
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Early examples of the use of ribbon controllers in a musical instrument are in the Ondes Martenot and Trautonium. In some early instruments, the slider of the potentiometer was worn as a ring by the player. In later ribbon controllers, the ring was replaced by a conductive layer that covered the resistive element.
Ribbon controllers are found in early Moog synthesizers, but were omitted from most later synthesizers.[1] The Yamaha CS-80 synthesizer is well-known for its inclusion of a ribbon controller, used by Vangelis to create many of the characteristic sounds in the Blade Runner soundtrack.[2]
Although ribbon controllers are less common in analog later synthesizers, they were used in the Moog Liberation and Micromoog.
There was a resurgence of ribbon controllers on synthesizers in the mid-1990s, beginning with Korg's physical and analog modeling performance synthesizer Prophecy (1995), incorporating a unique pressure/position ribbon mounted on a modulation wheel ("log"), and their Trinity (1995) workstation (which could accommodate a Prophecy counterpart SOLO-TRI option board), as well as Kurzweil's K2500-series workstations (keyboard versions, 1996), which incorporated both a 4-inch pressure/position ribbon and a separate 600mm-long position ribbon programmable into multiple zones. Roland incorporated a ribbon controller in their JP-8000 (1996) synthesizer.
As of 2020[update], ribbon controllers are available as control voltage and MIDI peripherals. An example of a modern synthesizer that uses a ribbon controller is the Swarmatron.
Later in 2010/2011, Korg released a series of minisynths called Monotron using the ribbon controller, it became so popular that it still in production in 2023.
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