T-ape

How it works

Easily switching between modes you can play sounds of a handpan, steel tongue drum, xylophone or glockenspiel with up to 9 voices polyphony. Touch pads in the wings consist of a few segments and they are sensitive to how much of the wing area your finger covers. This allows you to play softer or louder sounds dynamically.

Or you can connect its MIDI output to another synth and use it as a controller, expanding the range of sounds without limits. The built‑in accelerometer acts as pitch bend / continuous controller depending on the axis of rotation. Velocity information is transmitted too.

The Wing Drum can be played by anyone at home, outdoors, in the studio, therapist's office, classroom, meditation session or at the live performance.

The round shell is about 15cm / 6" wide and 5cm / 2" tall. It is made from solid wood sealed with natural oils to protect and show the natural beauty of the wood. The top panel is made from fiberglass laminated with matte black polymer or white enamel with gold plated metal elements. It is controlled using 5 buttons made from soft silicone.

Nine touch pads

There are eight wing pads and one central pad which can either play 9th note or act as a damper. Thanks to the segmented texture you can play them with variable force which influences note's volume.

Rotational sensor

Internal accelerometer measures the angle at which you hold your drum. This controls various effects; for example by tilting it sideways you can control delay lenght and tiling front and back can adjust reverb depth. This is all configurable.

Configurable parameters

In addition to setting up effects and defining new scales within default 440Hz or 432Hz temperaments, you can micro-tune each pad individually and then save the result as a new scale for easy access.

Multi-scale Drum

There are a few pre-defined scales, and it is very easy to set up your own! Arbitrary custom tuning is supported too.

D Celtic Minor

D Kurd Minor

G Akebono Pentatonic

C# Annaziska

C Pygmy

F Major

C Major Pentatonic

B Minor Harmonic

E Phrygian

Demos

When considering which kind of drum to buy, you usually need to listen to different YouTube videos and choose the one that sounds most appealing to you. The great thing about the Wing Drum is that you can find all beautiful sounds in one powerfull instrument, and it is not limited to one fixed scale. Check our video to see how cool it is!

Sound demo

Demonstration of built-in sounds with wooden or metallic timbre.

Built in sounds demo

As a MIDI controller

Controlling other synths using MIDI.

MIDI controller demo

CONTROLS

t-ape

Sound Timbres

For wide variety of timbres, three different synth engines are implemented. Based on sampled, wavetable or additive synthesis, with additional DSP algorithms to pitch‑shift the sound where needed and add optional sound effects.

Motion Detection

The Wing Drum is aware of its orientation in 3D space. To make your performance even more interesting, delay and reverb effects can be applied depending on how you tilt the drum. This is easy, as it is smaller and a lot lighter than its traditional counterparts, steel toungue drums or handpans.

Digital Synthesis

In the heart of the Wing Drum ticks a powerful dual‑core signal processor, as found in many digital synthesizers. We also included a dedicated high fidelity, low noise DAC chip to handle the outputs. The MIDI Out connection allows you to control another synth for wider variety of sounds.

Sensitive pads

Wing‑shaped capacitive sensinn pads react to how stronly you tap them. In fact they are rigid and rather sensing the area covered by your finger, however this is measured in a fraction of second and there is no noticeable delay between tapping your finger and a corresponding sound coming out.

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Black or White?

It's hard to decide and we love both, but it is good to have options, so which one is your favorite?

The top panel is coated with matte black polymer or white enamel‑like paint, with gold plated graphics.

If you are undecided but concerned about smudges, pick the white one, it's glossy so fingerprints are less noticeable. However the black drum's surface is very easy to clean too.

In love with wood

We use various kinds of hardwood and instead of painting it, we finish it with natural linsed oil and beeswax. This protects and shows the natural beauty of the wood used.

In the result, each drum is unique and looks a bit diferent thanks to varying wood grain patterns.

FAQ

Let us explain a few things about the Wing Drum which might not be obvious.

WORKS WITH SPEAKERS AND HEADPHONES

The headphone connectors is very standard 3.5mm jack, you can also connect the output to an amplifier or active speakers. The other connector (one in the middle) transmits MIDI data at all times, so you can use the Wing Drum as a simple MIDI controller with nine pads and two parameters - emulating pitch bend and cc wheel by tilting it from left to right or back to forth.

IT RUNS ON USB POWER OR AA BATTERIES

It runs on 3 AA batteries. You can use standard disposable batteries, Ni-Cd, Ni-MH or Ni-Zn rechargeables (with 1.2 - 1.6V nominal voltage). All batteries must be charged externally. There is no rechargeable battery included because of the shipping restrictions, however if you can solder, you have an option to disassemble the device and install a rechargeable battery; then it will be charged via USB. It must be a 3.7V Lithium Polymer (Li-Po) with protection circuit (like this one).

IT WILL DO ALL THAT YOU SEE IN DEMOS AND MANUAL

Firmware updates are not likely to follow any time soon, we strive to release this instrument as a fully finished product. However, as we get feedback from you over time, we may release an update with small improvements. In such case, you'll need to use an USB cable and PC. The process is easiest on Windows or Linux, but more problematic on Mac (requires installing drivers, and running a Python script). If you do not have access to a Windows PC, we will not be able to give you support or advice.

Let Me Be Your Wings

In your package you will get:

 
 

 
 

GALLERY


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Wing Drum

€299
(or €360 incl. VAT)
BUILD TIME 3-4 WEEKS

Your Wing Drum will be shipped before 14th December.

Wing Drum, a digital tuneable drum that also acts as a MIDI controller

+ Accessories: protective pouch ♦ USB cable ♦ sticker ♦ manual

BUY NOW

Wing Drum as a MIDI controller

How to control other synths using your drum

A stream of MIDI data is transmitted at all times, including velocity and PB & CC. It may be handier and easier to use the drum than a standard keyboard, since it presents 9 notes of your desired scale in a very accessible way.

Sound demo

Demonstration of built-in sounds with wooden or metallic timbre

Wing Drum can play a few sounds of real and also synthesized instruments. Two buttons on top select between metallic (represented by robot icon) and wooden timbre (tree icon).