Kia move.ment: Virtual Instrument scientifically designed to inspire you
4,5 / 5,0 | 
A collaboration between synthesizer designer Arthur Joly, DaHouse Audio and Kia (who make cars) move.ment uses the sounds of movement in nature to inspire you.
Kia move.ment
I don’t know if you keep up with the movers and shakers in the car industry but Kia has this thing going on about “movement that inspires”. They are moving on from being a car manufacturer into a brand that’s about mobility. That could be mobility in products but also in services, in emotions and in probably in life itself. Kia discovered that music is quite interesting, life-giving and inspiring and so wants a piece of that.
Creative scientist and futurist Katherine Lewis said:
We found that people were more creative when they had listened to the songs… you could see increased alpha and theta power, a coherence of brainwaves seen and increased connectivity, particularly connecting the occipital and frontal parts of the brain, where our emotional control center is situated, and the areas connected to increased creativity and flow states.
So, Kia decided to build a virtual instrument that harnesses the magic of science to inspire people to make music. This is done through pink noise; the sounds of movement around us in nature, or something like that, for instance, wind, forests, rain, flocks of birds all exhibit the sort of frequency range associated with the inverse spectrum/frequency relationship of pink noise. Then Kia suggests there are 4 neuroscientific parameters which vital to every composition. These are called BPM (ideally 120bpm), Harmonic Progressions, Melodic Intervals and Texture. Don’t you just love it when a non-music related company lets the marketing department loose on a music product? Pure poetry.
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What you get with move.ment is an interesting blend of noise and oscillations. The background is set by your chosen environment. You can then mix in an oscillator with a choice of waveforms, dial in a filter, envelope and reverb. It’s relatively simple but also quite fascinating.
Arthur Joly says that he was invited by Kia to build two analog synthesizers. Kia then used them as the basis of the synthesizer part of move.ment. We’re a big fan of Arthur’s work so his involvement says a lot about what’s behind this synth.
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All of Kia’s claims about the science, the nature of music and how this is the first instrument that will inspire you are a bit overblown but you’ve got to admire their earnestness. It’s likely that Kia embarked on this journey through a desire to come up with original sounds for an in-car OS and various dashboard functions and the fact that it resulted in a playable instrument we can all enjoy is pretty cool.
move.ment is fun and interesting and completely free and is worth it just for the natural sounds. You might find yourself playing along with a smile on your face. And we should definitely test all our mixes by brain scan.
Download move.ment now for macOS or Windows, standalone and VST plugin.
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3 responses to “Kia move.ment: Virtual Instrument scientifically designed to inspire you”
They need to update their installer on macOS – need to use the Security System Preference to allow it to be installed…
This is hilarious! Imagine – music affecting how you feel!!! I’m really glad that they finally figured that out. I wondered what it was for.
I hope the synth makes a nicer noise than my Kia Niro does when reversing. Horrible, anti-social and ineffective ‘bonging’ noises that come from the FRONT of the car and can be heard 100 feet away.
Actually, judging by the number of different annoying sounds the Niro has, perhaps Kia should give up on cars and go entirely into synth production.