Eventide Misha User manual

User Guide
Version 1.0
P/N: 141374
Eventide Inc.
One Alsan Way
Little Ferry, NJ 07643 USA
Tel. [phone]
eventideaudio.com
Eventide is a registered trademark of Eventide Inc. All other trademarks contained
herein are the property of their respective owners. © 2022 Eventide Inc.
1

Contents
Introduction 4
What’s in the box 4
Installation 4
Quickstart Guide 5
Knobs, Buttons & Display (Play Menu) 8
Menus 11
Play Menu 11
Auto Play Menu 12
Clock Menu 13
Note Range Menu 13
Scales 15
Scale Selection 15
Factory Scales 15
User-defined Scales 15
Modes 15
User-Assignable Buttons 17
Tone Row 19
What is a Tone Row? 19
Manual (non-automated) 21
Automated 22
Interval button sequence 23
Play Options 26
Interval Button Option 27
Polyphony 30
Chords 30
Chord Menu 31
MIDI Out 32
CV Out 32
MIDI 33
MIDI In 33
MIDI Out 34
MIDI PassThru 34
2

USB Jack 36
Play Misha With A USB Computer Keyboard 36
Presets 37
Save 37
Load 38
Home 38
Setup Menu 38
Button Functions 39
CV Outputs 39
CV Inputs 40
MIDI 42
Clocking 44
Audio Output 44
Presets 44
Scales 44
SD Card 46
System 47
About Misha 49
Online Help 49
Updating Firmware 50
Factory Reset 51
APPENDIX 52
Physical/Electronic Specifications 52
Default Setup Parameters 52
Default MIDI Note Map 53
Default USB Keyboard map 54
MIDI Implementation Chart 57
MIDI adapter: 5 pin DIN to stereo 3.5mm 59
LEGALESE 59
Safety and Warranty 59
3

Introduction
Misha™is an innovative, interval-based musical instrument and sequencer. It’s designed
to be played like a keyboard instrument and yet it makes music in a way unlike any
instrument before it. It’s been said that Misha lets you make music in spite of yourself.
What’s the advantage of this kind of approach? Misha has a way of helping you discover
new musical ideas, even ones you didn’t consciously create. Another advantage is to
make it easy for people with little or no musical training to create melodies on the fly.
How? Keep reading and learn how easy this can be.
What’s in the box
Your Misha comes with the following:
- Misha 28 HP Eurorack module
- Quick Reference Guide
- Micro USB cable
- Micro SD card
- IDC power supply cable
- Mounting screws
- Eventide sticker
4

Installation
1. Power off your Eurorack system
2. Locate 28 HP of space in your Eurorack case
3. Connect the 10 pin side of the IDC power cable to the 2x5 pin header on the back
of the module, confirming that the red stripe on the power cable is connected to
-12V (next to the solid white line)
4. Connect the 16 pin side of the IDC power cable to the 2x8 pin header on your
Eurorack power supply, confirming that the red stripe on the power cable is
connected to -12V
5. Install Misha in your Eurorack case
6. Power your Eurorack synthesizer system on
5

Quickstart Guide
To see how Misha differs from a traditional keyboard, power up the unit and connect the
audio out jack to a mixer, amplifier, or headphones to hear the unit’s internal tone. By
default, the unit will be in C major, starting on middle C as displayed below:
Press these buttons to play the tune, “Mary Had a Little Lamb”:
Now, play the tune on any traditional keyboard by playing these notes/piano keys.
6

Misha’s buttons are interval-based. This introduces a new perspective even for a trained
musician, but offers the untrained a simple path to creating melodies. Rather than fixed
tones, the buttons represent movement, up or down a given scale.
Misha’s panel has 18 control buttons and all are dedicated to performance. Nine of the
control buttons are ‘primary’ controls and are arranged not unlike one octave of a piano
keyboard. Like any other keyboard instrument, when you press a button, a note is
sounded. Unlike the keys of a piano keyboard however, Misha’s buttons are not ‘tied’ to
a given note. They are ‘tied’ to the intervals of a musical scale.
Play middle C on a piano keyboard and you’ll always hear middle C. Press Misha’s middle
button (labeled “0”) and you’ll hear the last note that you played. If you played C last,
you’ll hear C again.
Now return to the Misha keyboard. If you press +1, you’ll hear D. If you press +1 again,
you’ll hear E. Try some other interval buttons, maybe alternating -2 and +1 in order to
hear a simple descending pattern. Try different combinations of interval buttons to hear
what comes out.
Take a look at the “solfege wheel” in the center of the display. The notes of the currently
selected scale are arranged in a circle, in ascending order of pitches covering an octave.
As you play, you will see your current position represented by a white dot that moves
around the circle, and at the center of the display the note is spelled out (e.g. Eb). There
is also an option also to use solfege symbols (“Do, Re, Mi”) in place of note names.
Misha also greatly simplifies the process of playing in different key signatures.
7

Try this: Turn the knob to select a new key. Now you can play the exact same sequence
of intervals in a different key. Make sure you are starting at the root of the scale (the
white dot needs to be at the top of the circle) and play “Mary Had A Little Lamb” again.
You can play specific melodies, as in the example above, or you can just improvise
something. Play around now, and see what you discover.
While you are exploring, try out some other scales. Misha also lets you do this easily.
Whatever pattern of intervals you learn to play in one scale applies equally well to other
scales.
Try this: Find a pattern of interval buttons you like and then turn the Scale Knob to select
a new scale. Now when you replay that same pattern, the overall “contour” of your
phrase will be preserved, but Misha will play it using the notes of the new scale you
picked.
8

Knobs, Buttons & Display (Play Menu)
Here is a description of what the various knobs, buttons do and what the display shows
when in the opening menu, “Play Menu”.
Key Knob
Turn the Key Knob to set the key signature. The key signature is displayed on the LCD
above the solfege wheel, on the left.
Scale Knob
Turn the Scale Knob to select a scale. The scale is displayed on the LCD above the solfege
wheel, on the right. See “Scales” section below for more detail.
9

(Record/Stop):
Initiates recording Tone Row pattern (LED turns red), or stops and exits Tone Row
playback (LED turns off). (Please see “Tone Row” section below.)
If there is a Tone Row in memory, but the tone row is neither playing nor in pause, then
press and hold Scale Knob and then press to perform the Tone Row once through
(“Play Once”).
(Play/Pause):
Plays the Tone Row from the beginning of the sequence. If an internal or external clock is
detected, then the Tone Row will continue to play automatically. If you are currently
recording a Tone Row, pressing this will terminate the recording early, sending it into
playback.
Once the Tone Row is playing back, toggles a pause in the Tone Row, leaving the
user still in Tone Row playback.
LCD screen
Key And Scale Indicators
The top left and right of the display indicate the key and scale we are currently in,
respectively.
Solfege Wheel
Graphically displays notes of scale, note position and name.
Octave Display
Boxes below the solfege wheel indicate current octave and number of octaves in
the current note range.
User Buttons
These perform user-defined functions. See “User-Assignable Buttons” section below.
Undo (⤺)
This is the “undo” key; it returns you to the previous note. Besides being useful in
general playing, this is also helpful in learning a new melody. If you hit the wrong note,
then press ⤺ and you will hear the previous (different) note and this time hopefully you
can locate the correct button to press. That is, ⤺ undoes the last (non-zero) move.
If in a Tone Row, ⤺restarts the Tone Row when it is pressed (when in Play or Auto Play
menu).
Interval Buttons
These nine buttons (-4,-3,-2,-1,0,+1,+2,+3,+4) form a kind of keyboard - an interval
keyboard. They are a good starting point for making music. Let’s take a trivial example: If
10

the scale selected is chromatic, then pressing the +1 button repeatedly steps through all
twelve notes of the scale. But one can move forwards by two, or backwards by three,
etc. So one can imagine that the twelve notes are the numbers on the face of a clock,
and one is moving around the clock by jumping forwards and backwards from number to
number.
▲ (Left Shift) and ▼(Right Shift) buttons
These decrement/increment through the 4 menus. Press and hold each one or the
other to bring up various screen options as well.
11

Menus
There are 4 menus: Play, Auto Play, Clock, and Note Range. We’ve just seen the basics of
what the various knobs and buttons do in the Play Menu. Let’s see now in detail how
they function in all four menus. (The functions of the knobs and buttons change,
depending on which menu you are in.)
To cycle through this set of 4 menus, press the ▼ or ▲ button. Bounce back
immediately to the Play Menu by pressing both ▼and ▲ simultaneously. From the Play
Menu, the first press of either ▼ or ▲ will bring up the last menu viewed.
Play Menu
The Play menu is for real-time performance and recording your Tone Row sequences.
●Press the Interval buttons to perform the intervals -4 to +4
●The Key Knob scrolls through musical keys as you rotate it. Press and hold the Key
Knob while rotating it to load a new key signature on release
●The Scale Knob scrolls through the scales as you rotate it. Misha contains 200
slots for scales: 4 banks of 50 scales, with 2 banks of factory scales and 2 banks of
user scales. Press the Scale Knob to cycle through these 4 banks of scales. If the
currently selected scale contains modes (indicated by a green triangle next to the
scale name), press and hold Scale Knob while rotating to access the modes of
that scale
●Pressing the user buttons perform user defined functions.
●The bottom row of the menu shows the octave range and current octave of note
playback
●You can press and hold Key Knob + any user button to assign functions to the
user buttons
12

●If a Tone Row is not playing, you can press and hold Scale Knob and then press
the User 3/4 buttons to load a random key or scale.
●If a Tone Row is not playing, press and hold Scale Knob and press ⤺to go
"home" (returns you to the root of the scale in the middle register).
●If a Tone Row is playing, you can press and hold Scale Knob and press ⤺to reset
the Tone Row to its initial conditions: Play Option: Prime, Inverted: Normal,
Sequence: +1
Auto Play Menu
(This menu appears only when a Tone Row is auto-playing.)
Once our Tone Row is playing back, we'll be brought automatically to the Auto Play
Menu, which deals with different ways to manipulate and play back your Tone Row.
●Pressing the button will stop the Tone Row. After pressing , If you
press , your Tone Row will play from the beginning of the sequence. If
instead you press again, you'll start recording a new Tone Row
●Pressing the button while the Tone Row is playing will pause the sequence.
Pressing it again will resume the sequence from where you left off.
●Pressing the ⤺button will immediately play the sequence from the beginning.
●Pressing User 3/4 will shorten/lengthen the note length. The note length is
displayed in the bottom left corner of the screen.
●Press and hold Key Knob + ⤺to invert the sequence.
●Rotate the Key Knob to select Play Option. Press in and rotate the Key Knob to
select Play Option on release. (See “Play Options” in the “Tone Row” section
below.)
●Rotate Scale Knob to select Interval Button Option. Interval buttons act according
to which interval button option is chosen at top right of screen. (See “Interval
Button Option” in the “Tone Row” section below.)
●Press in and rotate Scale Knob to select value according to the Interval Button
Option selected.
13

●Press in Scale Knob and press user 3 to get the last value, according to Interval
Button Option.
●Press in Scale Knob and press ⤺ to reset the currently selected Interval Option.
Clock Menu
The clock menu displays the clock source/status and BPM.
●Rotate the Key Knob to turn the internal clock on or off. Connecting an external
clock source to the clock input automatically sets the clock to external
●Rotate the Scale Knob to adjust the BPM in increments of 1. Pressing + turning
the Scale Knob will adjust the BPM in increments of 5
●Press the ⤺button repeatedly in time to set a tap tempo for the internal clock
Note Range Menu
The Note Range Menu allows you to optimize the note range for different sounds and
scales. This can be done while the sequence is playing, which can create many
interesting results.
14

●The Key Knob sets lowest note value
●The Scale Knob sets highest note value
●Your note Ranges are saved within the preset and Pressing the ⤺Button will
reset the note range
●Press ⤺to load min/max values from last loaded preset - see System/Note
Range Home for how this is defined.
15

Scales
Scale Selection
Make sure you are in the Play Menu, then turn the Scale Knob to select a musical scale.
Press and release the Scale Knob to cycle through the 4 banks of scales, 50 scales each:
S1, S2 (factory scales) and U1, U2 (user scales).
Factory Scales
Misha comes pre-loaded with 100 scales, bank S1 and S2, which are generally grouped
by type of scale:
- Well Known (Major, Chromatic, Pentatonic, etc.)
- Octave-repeating subsets of the Chromatic scale (from 4 to 11 notes per scale)
- Key Modulating (non-octave repeating) subsets of the Chromatic scale
- Xenharmonic (microtonal) - various equal tempered scales, scales from around
the world
The complete list of factory scales can be found in the Scales and Modes supplemental
document.
User-defined Scales
User Banks U1 and U2 each contain 50 slots, and each slot can be filled with one of the
factory scales, or with a scale written by the user in Scala format. (See the section below
called “Setup/Scales” for more information on Scala).
By default, U1 and U2 are pre-loaded with the same scales in S1 and S2 (factory scales),
but can be overwritten with either type of scale mentioned above. To load a factory
scale into a particular user scale slot, use the menu item “Setup/Scales/Bank Mapping”.
User scales are loaded from the SD Card by means of the menu item, “Setup/Scales/Add
Via SD Card”.
Modes
If you see a green triangle at the bottom right of the scale name, that means there are
modes available for that scale, which you can select by pushing in the Scale Knob and
rotating it to the desired mode. The root note of the scale mode appears at the top of
the wheel and both the root note and mode name are colored green.
The complete list of modes for the factory scales can be found in the Scales and Modes
supplemental document. In the Extended Scala format for Misha supplemental
document, you will find instructions on how to write a scala file for Misha that contains
modes.
16

There are two ways Misha handles changing the key signature when you move to and
from modes: “Preserve Root” and “Preserve Key”. This is a setting in
“Setup/System/Scale Mode”, and the default is “Preserve Root”.
For example, if in a Major scale, in order to get the second mode, Dorian, of the diatonic
scale, you would press in the Scale Knob and rotate it once clockwise. Let’s say you are in
C Major. If your “Scale Mode” is set to “Preserve Root”, then the display will read “C
Dorian” and the notes of the scale will be C-D-Eb-F-G-A-Bb.
If instead you are set to “Preserve Key”, then the display will read “D Dorian” and the
notes of the scale will be D-E-F-G-A-B-C.
In either case, to return to the root, which is to say the top note of the solfege wheel,
one can press ‘home’ - either via MIDI or pressing user 1/2/3/4 if it assigned to one of
those; or, if in Play Menu and not in auto play by means of the button combination of
holding the Scale Knob down and pressing the ⤺button.
17

User-Assignable Buttons
These four ‘soft’ buttons, User 1-4, perform a function defined by the user. The factory
default for User 1/2 is -/+ 1 octave. I.e., when set to the default, pressing user 1 will
repeat the last played note but 1 octave lower; user 2 sounds 1 octave higher. The
default for User 3/4 is chr-/+ (sounds a chromatic step lower or higher).
Note that while these pairs of buttons, User 1 & User 2, and User 3 & User 4, are similar,
there are a few differences.
●User 1 and User 2 are saved to and recalled by Misha presets, whereas User 3
and User 4 are global settings, unaffected by the loading of presets.
●The function ‘chromatic’ can be assigned only to User 3 and User 4.
To assign a function to one of the user buttons, one presses and holds the Key Knob and
then presses the user button (1, 2, 3 or 4) which is to be assigned. This brings up the
following list to choose from, which includes a range of interval buttons, as well as other
functions:
•Same Interval: Repeats the interval from the last button pressed. I.e., the
sequence +3, SAME results in +3, +3, whereas -2, SAME results in -2, -2
•Same Pitch: like SAME, but repeats the actual frequency ratio, rather than the
number of steps, even if it results in a note not in the current scale. As an
example, let’s say one is in the key of C, and let’s say previously that one has
started on the note D and pressed +1 to go to E. SAME button will move the user
to next note in the current scale, F, but SAME PITCH will repeat the whole tone
interval and the user will land on F#.
•Random Interval: a random interval.
•Undo (⤺): undoes the previous interval move, returns you to the previous note
•Undo -/+ 1: same as the undo function, except that it increases or decreases the
interval by one step.
•Octave -/+1: moves you up or down an octave, making a tone like any other
interval button
•Octave -/+2: moves you up or down two octaves, making a tone like any other
interval button
•Move Pitch: -14, -13, …,-6, -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3, +4, +5, +6, …,+13, +14
•Momentary mute: while depressed all button pushes are silenced
•Home (sounding): returns you to the root of the scale (or mode if selected) in
middle register and plays that note
•Chr Shift -1, +1
Chr shift functions do not make sound when depressed, but rather flatten or
18

sharpen whatever other notes are sounded while they are depressed. You can
think of the analogy of the chromatic shift key on a harmonica.
In addition one can also assign to User 3/4:
•Chromatic (default)
If chromatic is selected on either of these two user buttons the other will also be
assigned chromatic. Chromatic buttons sound a note one step chromatically down (user
3) or up (user 4) from the previously sounded note. For a diatonic scale, “chromatic” is a
half step, but more generally “chromatic” is defined in the scale data. E.g., in a
microtonal scale, typically it would be halfway from the first to second note of the scale.
19

Tone Row
The Tone Row is the basis for Misha’s sequencing functions. One can record and play
back such a sequence of pitches either manually or in an automated manner.
What is a Tone Row?
Traditionally, a “Tone Row” is an ordered series of twelve notes in the standard Western
chromatic scale, without any note repeated. In other words, each note is only played
once within the twelve note sequence. The Tone Row is a technique used in serial
composition, generally attributed to the composer Arnold Schoenberg, who developed it
in the 1920’s. In serial music, the note series of the Tone Row then becomes a “motif”
that is then used in various ways throughout the work.
In Misha’s Tone Row mode, the user creates a Tone Row by pressing interval buttons.
Misha partially automates the creation process by making sure that the next pitch hasn’t
been played already. Misha also extends the concept of the Tone Row by allowing a Tone
Row to be created in any scale, not only the traditional twelve-tone (chromatic) scale.
(As an example, one can create a Tone Row using the 20 note equal tempered scale).
There are 2 stages to Tone Row Mode: recording and playback. Once the Tone Row is
recorded, the user can play back the Tone Row either manually - by pressing interval
buttons (or sending in remote commands via MIDI, USB keyboard or CV Inputs) - or
automatically, if there is an internal or external clock running.
Recording: Pressing the button turns Tone Row on and off. In Tone Row mode the
LED lights RED while you fill up a Tone Row by pressing the interval buttons. When the
Tone Row is completely populated the LED turns off and the LED lights up green.
When creating the Tone Row, if the interval button you have pressed would result in a
note already used in the series then the next unused pitch (in the direction of that
interval) is chosen. (Bear in mind that the repetition of a note in a different octave is also
generally not allowed - i.e., if you already have F#4 in the series you cannot also have
F#5. However, in Setup/Tone Row Octaves one can choose an option to allow repeats in
another octave.)
Note also that while recording a Tone Row, some features are disabled, including
changing of key or scale, and also going into the settings menu. If you wish to leave the
recording stage and abandon the creation of the Tone Row, simply press a second
time to cancel out of it.
Misha will switch into the PLAY stage of Tone Row mode when the sooner of these
occurs: either all the notes of the scale have been used up, or the button is
pressed to create a Tone Row prematurely, i.e. with fewer than the total number of
notes of the scale.
20