The Eviola: A bow operated MIDI controller

The Eviola is a designed to be a novel MIDI instrument that can be played with a bow and is a collaboration between Ben Glover seen here playing it and John Dingley. Previous electronic bow attempts have met with limited success and this is clearly a technical challenge. There has never been a MIDI bow for playing a virtual violin. (This is an entry for the MIDI Innovation Awards 2023) Key aspects: The bow: We investigated several technologies including optical flow sensing and even time-of-flight range sensing between bow handle and instrument body. The most effective and reliable solution is an adaptation of a rotary position encoder where a wheel with several hundred slots interrupts a beam of infra-red light to produce a pulsed output. By straightening out the slotted wheel we now have a slotted bow. Finger pads: The fingering is based on that of the Nyle Steiner "EVI" electronic wind instrument with four capacitance touch sensors on the main instrument body and four on the bow handle itself, giving a three and a half octave range. General construction: The physical components are a mix of laser cut ply, acrylic and 3D prints. The internal microcontroller is a TeensyLC which reads the sensor and capacitance touchpad data to create the MIDI output. MIDI interface: The Eviola outputs MIDI data via the USB cable (USB-MIDI) and can be powered via this USB cable from any devices such as a PC that it may be connected to. It also has a traditional 5-pin MIDI-out socket and a rechargeable battery holder. If a low latency Bluetooth wireless MIDI transmitter is plugged into this MIDI-out socket and a battery fitted, it can be used without any cables.