August is Upon Us

Welcome August and welcome Blog #5 👋

We’ve got a big update for you guys on Gamma’s progress/timeline, the MIDI innovation awards, and a sneak peek at Gamma’s Manual going over its rich set of features!

Gamma Updated Timeline ⌚

We’ll start with what a lot of you guys are here for: Gamma’s updated timeline!

As with any project, getting it over the finish line is often the biggest hurdle. We try to avoid delays as much as possible, but oftentimes they’re unavoidable. 

This was unfortunately the case getting in the finalized PCB samples from our manufacturer. We were hoping to get these in around the middle of July for confirmation before proceeding with the bigger PCB order, however these did not show until just last week.

This delay means we’re going to need to push the expected ship date to September, 2025.

We know unexpected delays like this aren’t ideal, but we appreciate your understanding as this happened to be something outside of our control.

The good news is that Gamma’s hardware is finalized and 85% of the software is complete! 

We’ve now confirmed and ordered the first batch 🎉

MIDI Innovation Awards 🏆

Switching gears for a moment, let’s talk about the MIDI Awards! 

The MIDI Innovation Awards are a yearly competition hosted by the MIDI Association. We’ve entered a couple of our new products and would love the support if you’re interested in voting! 

Please find our submissions below:

Gamma Mini Synth

LC-1X+

We recommend you vote ASAP as voting closes TONIGHT (August 4th, 2025).

We’d also like to give a shoutout to another MIDI Awards submission by Tobi at Ableton Drummer. Tobi developed the Max for Live Device for MIDI BLASTER a few years ago, and has submitted his latest software project: Connect Through MIDI.

We appreciate your support! 👽🙏

Gamma Manual Sneak Peek 👀

That’s right, we finally got a chance to put together Gamma’s manual!

It’s by no means complete, but we wanted to give everybody a sneak peek well before we start shipping. 

We tried to put as much information in as possible while still keeping it digestible. Let us know what you think!

👉 check it out here 👈

We’re also planning to get a video manual made up as well (for those of you who are visual learners) - but I wouldn’t expect this to drop until after we ship in September.

Manual Highlights

Now that a draft of the manual is out in the wild, we can talk about some of Gamma’s most interesting features!

Scales

One of the main selling points of Gamma is the fact that everything you play will always be in key.

This is a main focus of the device, so we made sure that changing keys is as easy as turning the encoder at any time during normal operation.

For now Gamma supports every diatonic scale (major/minor) with plans to add new scales in the near future 🎶

Layout & customization

The default layout configuration for Gamma is:

• Left Keys + pair of knobs: Chords

• Right Keys + pair of knobs: Notes

• Left Stick: Notes

• Right Stick: Chords

This is how we like using the device, but we recognized that customers may want to customize this experience to their liking. So we added the ability to not only swap keys/knobs/sticks between notes and chords, but to also have both sets of keys be only notes or chords if you so please.

After all, more customization is never a bad thing! 😌

Presets

Presets are split between Factory and User. The Factory Presets are the ones that come pre-loaded with the device, while User Presets are the ones you can add yourself!

We’re still finalizing just how many Factory Presets will come with the device, but rest assured there will be a good number of options with a focus on variety (that includes some lower-toned options, for those who have been asking 😅).

Effects/Manipulations

The thumbsticks are one of Gamma’s most interesting features, and we’ve added a ton of cool effects/manipulations for you to play around with!

Here is the list of basic effects:

• Octave Up/Down/Difference

• Chorus

• Filter

• Tremolo

• Vibrato

• Pitch Up/Down

• Delay

• Reverb

Most of these are self-explanatory, other than Octave Difference, which raises the secondary oscillator(s) up octave(s).

Here are the manipulations (exclusive to the chords):

• Sus

• 7th

• 9th

• Parallel

• 1st, 2nd Inversion

• Remove Root, 3rd, 5th

• Strum

When one of these is hooked to the chord thumbstick it will change the chord to reflect the manipulation. For instance, Sus turns the chord into a Sus4 version of itself. Same idea for 7th and 9th. Parallel turns a major chord into its minor equivalent (or vice versa), 1st/2nd inversions move the root of the chord to the 3rd/5th, and Remove allows you to remove any one of the 3 notes of a chord.

Strum is a new feature we added during development. When enabled it will add time between each note of a chord triggered. We find that turning it on and putting a small amount of time between the notes can give the chords a really cool shimmer! ✨ …or a large amount of time will let the chord slowly play out - especially great for minor chords and slower tempo’s.

Effect Buffering and Stick Caps

Effect Buffering and Stick Caps are also new features we added during development.

When effect buffering is enabled, and you activate a stick effect, it creates a “buffer”, pausing that stick effect until the next note/chord is triggered. This is great for certain circumstances where you may want to trigger an effect, but not have it on the currently pressed note/chord. 

Meanwhile, stick caps is a setting found within each effect that allows you to set the max output of that effect when triggered by a stick. 

Shortcuts

Shortcuts may be one of the most useful features we’ve added to Gamma!

These are easy ways to change settings without having to open the menu. There are two ways to trigger a shortcut:

1. Hold stick + turn encoder

2. Hold stick + click encoder

Hold/Turn shortcuts are “Global” (affecting the configuration of both notes/chords), while Hold/Click are specific to the notes/chords tied to the left/right of the current layout.

Hold/Turn:

• Up + Turn = MIDI Mode Toggle

• Down + Turn = TBD

• Left + Turn = Factory Preset Cycle

• Right + Turn = User Preset Cycle

Hold/Click

• Up + Click = Octave Up

• Down + Click = Octave Down

• Left + Click = Toggle Layout

• Right + Click = Toggle Hold

MIDI

Gamma utilizes the USB MIDI protocol over USB C to act as a MIDI Device.

Notes and chords function the same as in normal operation - just sending MIDI Messages instead of triggering the synth! Meanwhile the knobs will send MIDI CC, as do the thumbsticks when tied to an effect. When a thumbstick is tied to a manipulation or certain effects (i.e. Sus, 7th, 9th, Octave Up/Down) it will directly affect the MIDI Messages instead of sending a CC.

For now we only have the MIDI Out portion of the software complete, with MIDI In coming sometime in the future via software update.

Interested in future colorways? Drop a comment!

Other TIN News

• We’re working on new videos showcasing some of Gamma’s new features (MIDI, Strum, etc…) watch for these to drop later this month on our socials!

• Reminder: We will be at Montreal Knobsession August 23 - 24, 2025. Come say hello if you’re in the area 👋

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TIN fun fact (the more you know 🌈🌠)

this.is.NOISE inc was founded September 17th, 2020... our company is turning 5 in just over a month 🥹