Lumatone is an infinitely customizable and extremely powerful instrument, but you can be up and running and playing it as an isomorphic keyboard in a matter of minutes.
Attach your kickstand
- Gently remove your Lumatone from its packaging, and the accompanying kickstand.
- Place it face down on a highly cushioned, soft surface to avoid putting pressure on the pitch and mod wheels.
- Position the stand over the screw holes on the underside of the Lumatone, and screw the two attached screws in tightly.
Be sure not to put pressure on the pitch/mod wheels or keys when attaching your kickstand.
Connect your Lumatone
- Remove the power adapter from the packaging and plug it into a power outlet. The adapter plugs into your Lumatone's power port one way only so be sure to line up the pins with the holes the first time you do it to understand which side is up.
- Connect your Lumatone to a sound-generating device such as a computer (USB or MIDI 5-pin) or a synthesizer (MIDI 5-pin). Your computer can be running any major DAW with MIDI support, and you can select any virtual instrument or soft-synth you'd like!
- Attach a sustain or expression pedal if you desire.
- Switch on your Lumatone with the power switch on the back. The Lumatone will move through its startup sequence, which can take around a minute. (We're working to improve this startup time via a future firmware update.)
- If not already selected, select Preset 1 via your Lumatone's 10 preset buttons at the top of the instrument.
- Enable your sound generating device as you would with any other midi controller.
- Get ready and play your first few notes!
Preset 1 is a basic isomorphic mapping based on the traditional Bosanquet keyboard layout. Chords and scales all maintain the same shape across the entire keyboard. Ie. a C-Major chord will have the same shape for all other major chords (D-Major, F# Major, etc).
This process works for any mapping that is not microtonal and mapped using default MIDI values. Much more information is available here in our help centre about connecting to sound-generating devices using microtonal mappings, so feel free to learn and explore!
