What are the Misa Quadwave and Triwave digital guitars?

The Misa Triwave and Quadwave are MIDI controllers designed for playing phat sounding monophonic synthesizers.

The Triwave is a 3 string, 20 fret controller, with a flat neck surface, and the Quadwave is a 4 string, 16 fret controller, with recessed string tracks.

These instruments are designed to work with a computer that has a low latency audio interface.

Once connected, they can play software synthesizers such as Vital and Serum, either standalone, or within a Digital Audio Workstation like Ableton.

To play a note, press a note sensor on the neck, and tap the touch pad. If you then stop touching the pad, the note will keep playing, until you lift your finger off the note sensor.

You can hook the touchpad up to a synth’s controls. 

For example, by sliding horizontally across the pad, you can rotate a corresponding control from minimum to maximum.

Since the pad updates the synth’s controls as soon as you tap it, you can change the sound of each note at the moment it is played.

The Misa Triwave and Quadwave are designed for synths in monophonic mode. This mode prevents the synth from playing more than one note at a time. This means, as more notes are pressed, only the newest one can be heard, and the previous note glides into the next note. Polyphonic mode is different. In this mode, a synth can play multiple notes at the same time, like a chord.

It’s important to note that the Triwave and Quadwave are not designed to work with synths in polyphonic mode.

By exclusively using monophonic synths, you can infuse your playing with one of their most characteristic sounds. Glide. Which is necessary for techniques like hammer-ons and slides.

If you want to use a synth that’s polyphonic, don’t worry. Usually polyphonic synths have a setting to switch to monophonic.

By default, the strings all output to a single synth, sharing a MIDI channel.
But to play multiple notes at the same time, you can route the strings to different monophonic synths.

By tapping 5 fingers on the pad, you can switch to the second configuration setting where the strings are re-routed so that the first string outputs to one synth, and the other strings all output to a second synth. We call each group of strings a string set.

In the third configuration mode, all strings are routed to separate synths. This mode can be used to slide chords.

This is just the start. To learn more, check out our other videos on Youtube.