Nopia has confirmed its launch date. Preorders for the first batch open on Kickstarter on 15 September, as a limited run to fund production. Super Early Bird pricing starts at $650.
The instrument began as a prototype built for a design competition. Argentinian designers Martin Grieco and Rocio Gal posted a video of it in 2023, and it collected around 2.6 million views in eight days. Three years of industrial design, electronics, firmware and prototyping later, the finished MK1 is ready.
Nopia is a semi-modular harmony generator with an onboard sound engine and full MIDI connectivity. It is built on the principle of perceiving chords as degrees rather than individual notes.
That is why it has only one octave of keys. Each key is a chord rather than a note, and the octave covers the full chromatic scale, so it reaches secondary dominants and modal interchange as well as the seven diatonic degrees. A Chord Builder, Tonal Selector and Extensions dial handle movement through progressions.
Four sound modules carry the output: Keys, Bass, Arp and Pad. They all feed a master effects chain and a looper. The engine is a hybrid of sample-based and virtual analog synthesis, and the effects cover filter, delay, reverb, saturation, tape emulation and beat repeat.
Each module gets its own TRS MIDI output, four in total, alongside MIDI sync and clock in and out. There is a TRS MIDI input and a sustain pedal input.
Audio runs through a quarter-inch master out and an eighth-inch aux out with a dedicated metronome. Power and MIDI arrive over USB-C at 5V.
Multitouch capacitive sensors handle strum, letting you play individual notes of a chord, and pitchbend across both chromatic and microtonal gestures. An OLED display acts as a chord monitor and shows parameter feedback.
Nopia measures 41.5 by 23 by 3.5cm and is built in wood. Grieco and Rocio Gal describe it as made for the studio, the stage and the backpack, which puts it in similar territory to the more unorthodox instruments producers have been picking up.
The company says there is a learning curve, as with any instrument, but that music theory knowledge is not required to play it. That places it alongside a growing set of harmony tools arriving for producers who want to work faster without studying functional harmony first.
Nopia is the first instrument from the team, which grew out of the original two-person project. Full details are on nopia.io, and the Kickstarter goes live on 15 September. Expect it to sit among the more talked-about launches since Superbooth.
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