Embodme is a French company that builds one kind of instrument: a touch surface you play. The team describes itself as R&D-powered instrument makers — human-machine interface specialists working alongside musicians and engineers, with every component tested in-house for latency, durability, thermal behaviour and noise tolerance. What comes out of that is the Erae line, whose current generation is the Erae 2.
Who it is for
- Producers with a modular who are tired of a separate MIDI-to-CV box — the Erae 2 carries 24 configurable analogue outputs (12 pairs) that can be set as CV/Gate, drum triggers or bipolar modulation.
- MPE players — the instrument speaks MIDI 1.0, MPE and MIDI 2.0, and 100 µm XY accuracy means a slow finger slide produces a continuous curve rather than a staircase.
- Anyone playing with sticks or fingers on pads — the 16,000-sensor force matrix covers the whole surface, and global response time stays under 1 ms.
- Studios with a crowded desk — one surface instead of a keyboard, a pad controller and a CV interface means one power supply and one footprint instead of three.
- Not for someone who needs a weighted keyboard — this does not replace a digital piano or a hammer-action controller for piano parts. A touch surface gives you expression; it does not give you key resistance.
What the range contains
- Erae 2 — the instrument itself: a playing surface with a 42 × 24 RGB display beneath it, an eight-track looper and an arpeggiator.
- Skins — overlays that change the surface texture for a specific technique: the Drum Skin for stick playing, the Fabric Skin and Black Skin for fingers.
- Accessories — a mounting plate for a stand, a hard cover, a 65 W USB-C power supply and a 2 m USB-C cable.
- The same collection also holds the Norand Mono MK2 — an analogue desktop monosynth with a 1024 PPQN sequencer and pads that read movement on three axes.
What the Erae 2 replaces
Comparing the Erae 2 to another touch surface is not much use, because the real purchase question is different: how many separate boxes leave the desk.
| Job | The usual gear | What the Erae 2 does |
|---|---|---|
| Expressive melodic parts | An MPE keyboard controller | MIDI 1.0, MPE and MIDI 2.0; 100 µm XY accuracy in both absolute and relative modes |
| Drums and sample triggering | A pad controller | 16,000 force sensors across the whole surface, response under 1 ms, plus a drum skin for stick work |
| Driving a modular | A separate MIDI-to-CV interface | 24 analogue outputs (12 pairs) configurable as CV/Gate, triggers or bipolar modulation |
| Changing layout mid-performance | Swapping controllers | Eight scene selectors on the surface, layouts built in the Erae Lab app |
| Layering live | An external looper | An eight-track looper with per-track length, quantisation and tempo |
Which one to take
- You have a modular and a separate MIDI-to-CV box — the Erae 2 and its 12 output pairs are enough to take that box out of the rig, with the outputs configured from the same layout you play.
- You play with sticks — the Erae 2 with the Drum Skin. The overlay texture is meant for strikes rather than slides.
- You play with fingers and want smooth glides — the Fabric Skin or the Black Skin; the first is the cheaper option, the second covers the full surface.
- You gig and travel with it — the hard cover and the mounting plate for a keyboard stand, powered from the 65 W USB-C supply.
- You are after an analogue bass and a sequencer, not a controller — the Norand Mono MK2: two oscillators with through-zero FM and hard sync, a three-pole filter and a path ending in analogue overdrive.
See also: MIDI controllers and desktop synthesizers.
Before you choose
- What MIDI is and how it actually works — why MPE and MIDI 2.0 change how much you can play in a single gesture.
- What a synthesizer is — what a controller like this is meant to drive.
Why buy here
The Erae 2 is hard to decide on from a spec sheet, because everything turns on how the surface answers your finger. In our Warsaw showroom (Nowogrodzka 6A/102) you can play it and find out whether it replaces your keyboard or sits next to it. Selected gear qualifies for our free 30-day Test-Drive, and everything ships with 36 months of warranty and a 30-day no-reason return window. We ship across Poland and to every EU country. If an item is not in stock at the moment, write to shop@wiredtunes.pl and we will give you a delivery date.
About the brand
Embodme works out of France, and rather than widening its catalogue it keeps developing one design. The Erae line started with the Erae Touch, and its current generation is the Erae 2 — denser sensor matrix, analogue outputs and a built-in looper. Two pieces of software come with it: Erae Lab, where playing layouts are built by dragging elements around, and Erae Sound, a software synthesizer optimised for the Erae 2 that also works with other MPE controllers. That focus explains why the range is so narrow: what gets developed here is one interface, not a family of boxes.
