Instructions

Quick start

Sit about an arm's length from the camera. Good light on your hands.
Hold up your right hand. Move it left and right to pick a note.
Pinch thumb and index finger to play. Let go to stop.
Bring in your left hand. Raise it to brighten the sound, open and close your fingers to change the tone.
To stop all sound: hold up two fists, or tap the Stop button at the bottom right.

That's it. Everything else below is optional.

Right hand

Left / right: pitch
Pinch index: one note
Pinch middle: chord
Pinch ring: 7th chord
Pinch pinky: 9th chord
Higher hand: louder
Squeeze the pinch: more edge
Move while pinched: slide
Swing fast into a chord: strum
Hold a fist: stop your notes
Free mode only, tilt hand: minor / major / sus

Left hand

Higher hand: brighter
Left / right: morph the engine
Tilt: more reverb
Finger shape: overtones. Thumb is low, pinky is high. Fist is a pure sine.
Pinch: sustain pedal

Stopping sound

Two fists held for half a second: everything stops. Notes, loops and drums.
Stop button (bottom right): tap to stop your notes, hold to stop everything.
Space bar does the same as a tap. Shift + Space stops everything.

Modes

Key: notes locked to the key you pick. Can't play a wrong note.
Free: any pitch, slides between notes. Snap amount is in settings.
Stack: each pinch adds a held note. Pinch the same note to remove it.
Arp: pinch to latch a chord, it repeats. Hand height sets speed. With Click or Drums on it locks to the beat (Settings → Arp sync: grid, beat or bar).

Sounds

Preset menu at the top. Sound opens every parameter. Parameters marked with a hand icon follow your left hand while it's in view and go back to the slider when it leaves.

Loops, drums and the click

Layers 1, 2, 3: click once to record, click again to stop and loop. Click to mute or unmute. Shift-click clears. The first layer sets the loop length. With drums or the click running, loops snap to whole bars.
Drums: turns the beat on and off. The pencil opens the step grid. Each row has its own sound (26 to pick from), tune and decay. Patterns, swing and volume are there too.
Click: a metronome you hear but that never ends up in a recording.
Tempo: sets the beat, the click and the arpeggiator. The arp syncs to the click in four ways: free, grid (notes on the subdivisions), beat (pattern restarts each beat) or bar (restarts each bar). Swing carries over from the drums.

Recording

The red Rec button (bottom right) records everything you hear, except the click, as a 24-bit stereo WAV at your device's sample rate. It downloads when you stop. Drop it into any DAW.

Jam over yourself: turn on Drums, record Layer 1 with a riff, then press Rec and solo on top. Stop Rec and the whole thing, loop plus solo plus beat, is in the file. Untick "Record the drums" in the drum panel if you want the beat left out.

Phone

Kazete works sideways. Turn your phone to landscape for a wider playing area. On Android tap Landscape in Settings to lock it. On iPhone just rotate (make sure rotation lock is off).

If it isn't working

Wrong hand plays: Settings → Swap hands.
Notes trigger too easily or not at all: Settings → Pinch sensitivity.
Jittery: Settings → Smoothing, lower is smoother.
Only one hand in view plays by default. Turn that off in Settings if you want the left hand to only shape.

Keyboard

1 2 3 4 modes · [ ] presets · Q W E layers · Space stop · Shift+Space stop all · R record · M click · D drums · P sound · S settings · I instructions

KAZETE is a John Foval project. www.johnfoval.com

kazete

風 kaze, wind · 手 te, hand

Turn on Camera mode, hold your hands up with your palms facing forward, and play a modern synthesizer in the air. Right hand plays the notes, left hand shapes the sound.

Kazete takes its name and its spirit from the synthesizers of Japan. A new instrument you play with your hands in the air.

The Japanese inspiration behind Kazete

The synthesizer as most of us know it is a Japanese instrument. Roland, founded by Ikutaro Kakehashi, gave us the TR-808 and the Juno. Yamaha's DX7 put FM synthesis in every studio. Korg built the MS-20 and Kaoss Pad, an instrument you play by moving a finger through the air over a surface. Yellow Magic Orchestra and Isao Tomita showed the world what these machines could say.

Kazete borrows two ideas from that tradition. Ma, the space between things: silence and the reach of a hand are part of the music. And the idea that an instrument should be played with the body, not programmed. Raise your hands. The wind is the sound, the hand is the shape.

A John Foval project