Nopia – Intelligent Chords, Bass and Arps in a Box
4,8 / 5,0 | 
The Nopia is a clever box of tricks from Argentina that could be helping you make great tunes in a flash. We take a quick look at this new prototype!
In recent years, we’ve been inundated with super helpful tools that allow us to get tunes down quickly. There are plugins and tools all over the place that can generate chords sequences or bass lines. Drum pattern generators have been around for ages. But the bulk of these are pieces of software. Take the Player tools found in Reason. Drop one into the rack, connect it up to your synth plugin and BAM! Instant inspiration.
The Nopia Prototype
Now it seems that some people in Buenos Aires, Argentina have developed a hardware concept that collects together similar tools into a cool box. The Nopia looks like something that might have emerged from the design studio of Love Hultén or even Critter and Guitari. Its soothing pastel colour, soft lights and quirky one octave keyboard certainly put it in that particular design world. It’s what is under the hood that should really be catching your eye, or ear.
First of all, this is a prototype. A really good prototype, but a prototype nonetheless. But what do we have here?
Nopia
How Does It Work?
Well, a single octave piano-style keyboard and a corresponding keyboard layout of buttons occupy the lower half. You choose your key with the buttons and then every key you play on the keyboard generates a chord within that key. Nothing revolutionary there, you might say. Nopia works with Tonal Harmony, a concept that emphasises the relationship between chords, specifically the relationship between tonic, the home tone of the key, and dominant, the fifth note in the key. Nopia then allows you to generate simple or complex versions of the chords with extensions. For example, C, Cmaj7 or Cmaj9.
All About The Bass
The chord builder then drives the bass section. A single pad gives you the common root bass note, but a second pad adds a suitable variant. Better yet, this can all be clocked to MIDI for an instant rhythm section! The arpeggiator then takes the notes in the chord, breaking them into a suitable arpeggiation that can also follow MIDI clock. Nopia features a built-in sample based synthesizer and they’ve already developed a rack unit within Ableton Live and the hope is to turn Nopia into a standalone instrument.
Nopia
Round The Loop
To finish things off, Nopia has a built in looper so as well as being a compositional aid, Nopia could very well be on the desks of many a hardware jammer or EMOM’er.
The two people behind Nopia, Martin Grieco and Rocío Gal, seem to be on to a winner here. The video on YouTube has only been up a day and had over 133,000 views in 24 hours. A few of us here at Gearnews have become very excited by this, including our guitar-head Jef! We can’t wait to see how this develops.
Nopia isn’t available right now, but other cool boxes that might interest you in the meantime are!
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- Nopia: Nopia
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11 responses to “Nopia – Intelligent Chords, Bass and Arps in a Box”
I am very interested in purchasing the Nopia mini .
I’d love to purchase Nopia !
I need more information about the prive.
The unit is still in prototype phase, so prices won’t be available for a while 🙂
seen a demo of this device!! now take my money 💰 and send me one
Such an attractive presentation of such a well thought piece of bliss. I can’t not have this device. It’s a “must have” in my book.
This is one of the funniest comedy bits I have ever seen
looks too easy. does all the work for you, what’s the point?
How much will the estimated cost be in Dollars?
This is not currently known as the unit is still a prototype.
Ok see you when you will be officially on the market
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