The D-Beam was originally manufactured by Interactive Light, as a stand-alone unit, around 1996. It was then soon purchased by

Roland Corporation is a Japanese manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, electronic equipment, and software. It was founded by Ikutaro Kakehashi in Osaka on 18 April 1972. In 2005, its headquarters relocated to Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefecture. It has fact ...

, becoming trademarked and rebranded as D-Beam Controller for their own music equipment.

Background

After being acquired by Roland, the D-Beam Controller was introduced on a larger scale through the

Roland MC-505 The Roland MC-505 is a groovebox conceived in 1998 as a combination of a MIDI controller, a music sequencer, a drum machine, and a desktop synthesizer with many synthesis features: arpeggiator, oscillators, and voltage-controlled filter, contro ...

in 1998, was further incorporated into a large number of Roland's grooveboxes, workstations, keyboards, and digital samplers over the years. The D-Beam is an interface that can control and manipulate sounds by hand movements interacting with an infrared beam of light. The controller is usually mounted in the equipment's panel facing upwards, and senses the performer's hand (or other body part) at a height of up to 15" (~40 cm) or so above the device. Although controlled in a similar manner to a

theremin The theremin (; originally known as the ætherphone/etherphone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox) is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer (who is known as a thereminist). It is named afte ...

, the operating principles are fundamentally different; the theremin uses

Capacitive sensing In electrical engineering, capacitive sensing (sometimes capacitance sensing) is a technology, based on capacitive coupling, that can detect and measure anything that is conductive or has a dielectric constant different from air. Many types of sen ...

References

External links

What is D-Beam?

Circuit diagram for D-Beam components
{{Roland Roland synthesizers Gesture recognition