KOMA Elektronik and Passepartout Duo recently introduced Chromaplane, a unique new polyphonic electromagnetic instrument.
Since then, it’s gone on take first place in the 2025 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, a 2025 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, n annual event that celebrates innovative new instruments.
This video is a hands-on guide to getting started with the Chromaplane, and is a good introduction to what it’s capable of.
Topics covered:
0:00 – Intro
0:39 – Pickups
0:58 – How it Works / Playing
2:53 – Envelopes
3:33 – Polarity and Phase
4:27 – Alternative Pickups
5:02 – Voltage Controlled Filter
7:44 – Delay / Echo
9:30 – Tuning
10:44 – Tuning by Ear
11:46 – Using the Tuner
12:14 – Tuning Website
12:44 – External Input
13:10 – Feedback
14:43 – Outro
The Guthman Musical Instrument Competition has announced this year’s results, and the Passepartout Duo & KOMA Elektronik Chromaplane was selected as the 1st place winner.
The annual competition celebrates musical passion, entrepreneurial spirit, and innovation by showcasing new musical instruments from creative engineers who are pushing the boundaries of instrument design.
The Chromaplane is an instrument that uses two electromagnetic pickup coils to interact with a cloud of electromagnetic fields laid out in an isomorphic pattern on its flat surface. Designed in 2021 and refined in collaboration with KOMA Elektronik, it operates entirely in the analog domain, providing a responsive and polyphonic playing experience without conventional knobs or keyboards.
The official competition video:
You can find out more about the Chromaplane at the KOMA site.
The 2nd Place winner was the Lockruf Music Mulatar, which combines elements of slide guitar, harp, and percussion into a single instrument.
Moving bridges allow musicians to adjust notes freely, while the harp section supports quick retuning, and the body functions as a drum.
The 3rd Place winner was Dinosaur Choir: Adult Corythosaurus, created by Courtney Brown & Cezary Gajewski.
The Dinosaur Choir recreates the vocalizations of extinct dinosaurs using CT scans, 3D fabrication, and physically-based modeling synthesis.
Musicians can produce sound by blowing into a mouthpiece, which drives a computational voice box and resonates through a 3D-printed reconstruction of a dinosaur’s skull and nasal passages.
Full results are available at the competition site.
German synthesist Hainbach– in his latest video – takes a look at the KOMA Elektronik Chromaplane, a unique new polyphonic electromagnetic instrument.
The Chromaplane features a touchless interface, organic analog sounds, and an intuitive way of playing, made possible by invisible electromagnetic fields.
“The Chromaplane by Duo Passepartout and Koma Elektronik is an oddity: it is an experimental analog synth that does not have a keyboard or MIDI, but instead it is played with telephone coil pickups.
A beautifully unique idea that found success on Kickstarter, funding within minutes. I got to play with the pre-series model for a week.”
The Chromaplane is available to project backers starting at about $392. The project has already met its funding goal.
*Note: Crowdfunding projects can involve risk. See the project website for details.
