About Buchla Thunder Overlay

Introducing the Buchla Thunder Overlay for the Sensel Morph - a project that I played a key role in collaboration with Buchla U.S.A. This project brought the genius of Don Buchla's ergonomic designs to the unparalleled force sensitivity of the Morph platform.

In my role as the product designer of the Buchla Thunder Overlay, I collaborated extensively with teams at Buchla and Sensel. Our collective goal was to create a design that paid homage to the Buchla legacy while maximizing the potential of the Morph platform. To achieve this, I oversaw every detail of the design, color, and sizing, and worked closely with the team to ensure that we incorporated the necessary care and engineering to create an expressive and seamless experience. My contributions to this process included the keyboard design, silkscreen artwork design and 3D modeling, as well as the fast prototyping and usability testing phases of development.

With 27 dedicated areas that transmit MIDI or MPE input, the Buchla Thunder Overlay offers unparalleled expressive control, and I am proud to have been a part of creating an instrument that puts play back into music. The Overlay is exclusively native to MPE and features a new preset system that enables instant switching between nine mappings without needing to open the SenselApp.

I am thrilled to have been a part of a project that has received high praise from top-tier publications. The Buchla Thunder Overlay for the Sensel Morph is a testament to the rich history of expressive instrument design and the boundless potential of modern technology, and I am proud of the contributions that I made to this project.

In addition to my design work, I collaborated closely with the manufacturer of the Buchla Thunder Overlay, which is located in Guangdong, China. My role encompassed various responsibilities related to the manufacturing process, such as designing for manufacturability, managing color consistency, conducting durometer testing, and inspecting product samples.