Voyetra Sequencer Plus Mark III & MIDI Meets Guitar at NAMM '85

WBRA Television - Wayne Joness - December 1987 - Festival Fillers - Voyetra Sequencer Plus Mark III

Published on Mar 31, 2018 WayneJoness

"Video recorded in December of 1987, live at WBRA Television Studios in Roanoke, Virginia. Many thanks to Maureen Eiger who made this video possible. I used Voyetra Sequencer Plus Mark III, with a Kawai R50 drum machine, Roland JX-10 (synth brass), Yamaha TX-81Z (bass and other parts), and a humble Casio CZ-101 as my solo synth. More info: http://www.joness.com/gr300/voyetra_e..."

Also check out NAMM Expo '85 MIDI Meets Guitar By Tom Mulhern on Wayne Scott Joness' Vintage Roland Guitar Synth site.

On the Octave-Plateau Voyetra MIDI Guitar pictured below:

"The Octave-Plateau Voyetra MIDI Guitar (about $2,000.00) is a polyphonic synthesizer controller. It has no sound generating circuitry, but it can link directly to any MIDI-equipped synthesizer. Programs can be recalled via the numerical keypad on its upper bout, and such parameters as vibrato and pitch bending can be programmed into the touch plate/pickguards. Besides putting out a MIDI signal, it has a standard guitar pickup output."

"The successful hardware and software company Octave-Plateau Voyetra showed up to the 1985 Summer NAMM show with what may be the rarest MIDI guitar of all time, the Octave-Plateau Voyetra MIDI Guitar.

As a software company producing the acclaimed Sequencer Plus sequencing software, Octave-Plateau Voyetra had plenty of programming chops.

But the company was also responsible for the Voyetra Eight, a cutting edge polyphonic analog synthesier using a serial interface that predated MIDI.

Unlike the Roland 24-pin compatible guitars, Voyetra did not use pitch-to-MIDI processing, but instead used a microprocessor to scan the guitar for activity generated by the contact strings to the frets. This is approach is clearly faster and more accurate than the pitch-to-MIDI approach. In addition, the guitar had no less than 8 programmable knobs and switches for real-time control of various MIDI parameters. Notice in the photo the two rack-mount Voyetra Eight synths, presumably being controlled by the Octave-Plateau Voyetra MIDI Guitar

Little is known about this MIDI guitar. I have only found two references to the guitar, in the issue of Guitar Player Magazine, from September 1985, and in the English music technology magazine, Electronic Soundmaker & Computer Music, also from September of 1985."