Tag Archives: midi controller

The “Willy Wonka” of musical instruments created this oddly appealing portable MIDI guitar

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Nobody has destroyed, rebuilt, and reimagined the notion of synthesizers as much as Love Hultén. The maverick synth-maker is credited with designing some of the most incredible-looking electronic music machines out there (we’ve covered a fair few), from synths and loopers to modular electro units and even some record players and arcade games on the side. The Sweden-based music aficionado and synth-builder kicked off 2024 with a new project in collaboration with ‘catbeats’. Although this particular device doesn’t have a name yet, Hultén mentioned that it’s a unique-looking MIDI guitar that has a NESpoly synth on the inside, and a detachable fretboard that makes the entire apparatus easy to travel with.

Designer: Love Hultén

The unconventional design of the MIDI instrument is just about as much of a hat top to a guitar as possible. It does have a fretboard that triggers notes, and a dedicated strumming section for chords and such, but you’ve also got a variety of knobs and buttons that loop, modulate, play/pause, and increase/decrease the gain of what you’re playing.

The entire design can be disassembled for travel, and features a few quirky details made specifically for the user. Given catbeats’ obsession with felines, the guitar has a cat avatar in the bottom corner underneath a removable clear dome. Reminiscent of those cat backpacks that have the pet behind a clear plastic structure, the dome can be removed to access the tiny avatar underneath, and the avatar is made to be replaceable too, allowing you to swap out cats based on mood. Hultén also details that the guitar’s strap is made from ‘extraterrestrial skin’, although that’s just fancy wording given that the strap’s crafted from a clear flexible plastic sheet (or maybe aliens have better skincare than I do)…

MIDI guitars are unusual to come by, although if I did expect them, it would probably be from Hultén. The Gothenburg-based artist has worked on some rather unique and inspiring electronic products, from a circular Game Boy to a synth made from plastic dentures. Sure, this guitar doesn’t feature too high on Hultén’s weirdness scale, but it’s a remarkable representation of how his brain works.

Close-up view of the avatar area and the removable plastic dome.

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This tiny pocket drum machine lets you sample, remix, and drop beats anywhere

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With a dynamic touchscreen, two knobs, 4 buttons, MIDI inputs/outputs, a MicroSD card slot, and the ability to be connected to a variety of electronic instruments, the nanobox razzmatazz from 1010music is more powerful than it’ll have you believe. The mini drum sequencer is compact yet incredibly versatile, combining FM synthesis and sampling into its list of abilities, so you can literally turn even noisy traffic into sick beats!

Designer: 1010music

The $399 razzmatazz is the third in 1010music’s food-themed nanobox series. Following the fireball and lemondrop, the pink raspberry-themed drum sequencer promises to be ‘berry’ delightful at letting you sample audio, compose rhythms, and export them for music production and live performances.

The nanobox razzmatazz comes with 120 of its own presets, while allowing you to load your own samples using the MicroSD card slot, or even record 30-second samples using the line input on the back. You can create performances/loops using up to 8 pads, with compositions as long as 64 bars thanks to the touchscreen interface that lets you scroll nearly infinitely. Once your audio samples/presets are selected, razzmatazz lets you adjust primary parameters for each drum model using macro controls and add effects like delay, reverb, and distortion. For serious audio enthusiasts, the razzmatazz even allows you to individually sculpt and fine-tune the sound of each drum pad using filters, envelopes, distortion, a resonator, snap transient generation, bit crushing, and rate crushing.

Your samples and rhythms can then be easily integrated with other synths, drum machines, and audio devices using MIDI in/out ports, or even the USB-C port on the rear… or if you’re just looking to play around with the razzmatazz and explore its solo capabilities, its portable and nearly indestructible design is perfect for carrying around in your backpack and messing about with while at a coffee shop or on the subway.

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Modular music instrument lets you create your own combination of strings, pads, and keys

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A winner of this year’s Red Dot Design Concept Best of Best Award, Bitboard is an electronic instrument that presents an absolutely no-barriers approach to making music. With modular inputs that snap together to create the instrument, Bitboard lets you combine guitar strings, keys, pads, and even controls like faders to create the Frankenstein Musical Instrument of your choice. The underlying idea? Music-making is a creative process but it’s still fundamentally tactile… so it only makes sense to empower creators in various ways to create music how they see fit!

Designer: Chen Hsin Ju

Named after the fact that it’s an instrument that uses electronic music-making techniques as opposed to real acoustics, the Bitboard is a MIDI device with various input mechanisms. The instrument starts with an empty canvas, or fretboard that lets you mount modules onto it. The module ecosystem features various input devices, designed to offer different input styles. You’ve got keys, pads, strings, rings, sliders, and a whole variety of snap-on modules, giving you the ability to simultaneously shred on a guitar, play airy electronic synths, or even mix samples and loops with turntable-inspired modules and crossfaders/sliders. “The surface texture is simplified from the instrument’s appearance and operational characteristics to provide players with intuitive tactile feedback”, says designer Chen Hsin Ju.

The board offers a little something for everyone. It can be used by novices looking to try their hand at multiple instruments without splurging on them, music aficionados, experts, street musicians, deejays, and even electronic music professionals. The board is easy and intuitive to use, and offers a few nifty features, including recording, volume adjustment, looping, and even wireless connectivity via Bluetooth so you can hook your Bitboard to a speaker or even your own computer. “Taking originality to a whole new level, Bitboard challenges stereotypes and opens up new possibilities for musical instruments, allowing one to explore interesting musical forms through creative combinations”, the designer mentions.

The Bitboard is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2022.

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Move over Guitar Hero, this MIDI Controller Electric Guitar teaches you how to shred in real life

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Designed to make learning the guitar as easy as pressing buttons, the LUMIN is a MIDI-operated electric guitar that uses a set of illuminated buttons to teach you hand-eye coordination.

MIDI, which stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, is a widely accepted standard behind most synthesizers and electronic music equipment. Its basic principle is to convert physical actions into digital signals, which then get interpreted as musical notes. The LUMIN uses the same technology and implements it on a guitar, with multiple buttons running across the fretboard, and six string-like sensors on the guitar’s body. Hit the button on the fretboard and pluck against the string sensor and the guitar registers the corresponding note, playing it through a device like a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. Unlike an electric guitar, which takes electrical signals and passes them through filters, LUMIN is an electronic instrument that creates lines of code that can then be recorded, edited, and manipulated in tonnes of ways.

Designer: Marcus Hsieh

Although it has the potential to be a capable professional instrument, designer Marcus Hsieh envisioned the Lumin to be more of a gateway device, helping teach people how to play the guitar. LUMIN connects to an external gadget like a laptop which runs software with training modules similar to Guitar Hero… except these modules actually teach you how to play the guitar, guiding you through notes, progressions, chords, etc. LED lights built into the individual buttons on the fretboard act as additional visual cues, helping you learn finger placement and chord formations. The lights also change color to let you know if you’ve pressed the buttons correctly, serving as key visual feedback.

“The positive cycle made of learning, practice and positive feedback allows users to improve their skills more and more”, says Marcus. “This is how video games, in general, encourage players to improve their gaming skills, and learning musical instruments should do the same.”

He isn’t wrong though. Video games provide a strong feedback response through a platform that’s much more engaging than real life. Channel it the right way and you can actually train the brain to pick up real skills like coordination, timing, and having good reflexes. The only thing missing in this equation? An actual ear for music!

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SSL’s UF8 DAW controller is a luxury in search of an audience

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My studio setup, like many bedroom producers’, is a hodgepodge of random nonsense. Honestly there are a lot of pain points in my current workflow, but one of the biggest is mixing. I use a Tascam 424 Portastudio (yes the kind that records to cassette...

SSL’s UF8 adds physical controls to your virtual music studio

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At this point, it’s standard for almost all studio work to happen on a computer. But there’s no denying that having a physical mixer is more satisfying and intuitive than a mouse and keyboard, though. So a controller that can bridge that gap is alway...

Atom SQ review: An affordable and powerful companion for Studio One

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In 2013 Ableton introduced the Push, a MIDI controller built specifically for Live, one of the most popular audio workstations on the market. It had some flaws, but it proved popular enough that the company quickly followed up with the Push 2 in 2015...

Artiphon Orba review: Much more than a musical fidget toy

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I am both fascinated by and skeptical of strange, nontraditional musical instruments. And it’s this very thing that drew me to Artiphon’s Orba. It’s about as nontraditional as you can get. It’s a tiny synthesizer and looper, and an MPE MIDI controlle...

Jamstik Studio is the MIDI guitar you might actually want to use

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The Jamstik Studio MIDI Guitar is, as the name implies a guitar. But to be clear, if you’re just looking to buy a guitar, there is no reason to get one. It’s serviceable, but nothing special. The mahogany body and rosewood fretboard feel decent enoug...