From Technical Grammy winner and MPC inventor Roger Linn comes LinnStrument, a revolutionary new 200-pad MIDI controller that captures three dimensions of each fingers movement for subtle and precise control of note volume, pitch and timbre, polyphonically. Perform natural vibrato, bends, wind/bow expression and more, just like on acoustic instruments. The grid of 200 note pads is arranged as 8 rows of 25 semitones each, like a guitar or any stringed instrument, permitting note-to-note pitch slides not possible in a piano-key layout. 200 six-color LEDs indicate scale notes in any of 6 colors.

If you play guitar or any stringed instrument, it's surprisingly easy to transfer your skills to LinnStrument. If you play keyboard, it takes a little longer but you'll quickly appreciate the advantages for performing subtle pitch gestures in an intuitive way, easy transposition and spanning a 3-octave chord in one hand. Plus, at 22.5" by 8.5" by 1" thick, it's a whole lot more portable than a keyboard. With continuous pitch control similar to a violin, you might expect that it would be just as difficult as a violin to play in tune. But LinnStrument's pitch quantize insures that your notes are in tune regardless of where your initial touch lands within each 3/4 inch note square, then it immediately removes the quantizing so as not to restrict your vibratos and pitch slides. It's like having frets when you want them and not when you don't.

You can play it at a table like a keyboard but at only 1 inch thin and 5 pounds, it's also small and light enough to play standing up, using the included guitar strap buttons. And it's fully USB bus powered, so only a single USB cable is needed onstage. You can even power it from any Lightning-equiped iPad or iPhone.