Whilst the bedroom producer can compose music with just the click of a mouse, some hands on interaction with your music software will definitely help with the creative process. The keyboard is of course the most common MIDI controller, and they often come with a few knobs, buttons and sliders that you can assign to the parameters of your music software. Whilst this is great for previewing and tweaking your sounds, not all of us are any good at playing the piano. Or you may work mainly with beats or loops and find you don’t have the control you’re after with just a keyboard. Thankfully, it seems there is no end to the types of MIDI controllers out there. Here are a few of the more unusual ones that are out there at the moment…

The Zendrum

The Zendrum is a funny looking portable MIDI percussion instrument that you wear round your neck (or put on a stand), plug into your laptop, and then you have yourself an electronic finger drum kit. This is great for those percussionists that want to take their electronic beats to the live arena, or for those composers that are just looking for a new toy to help them with their beats. The early designs of the Zendrum in the early nineties by drummers David Haney and his friend Kim Daniel, caught the attention of Peter Gabriel whilst he was on tour. He asked them to design a percussive MIDI wireless system which could be moved around the enormous stage. They did this within three months it was promptly incorporated into the U.S leg of the tour. This led to the birth of the Zendrum Corporation, and generated interest from artists such a Mick Fleetwood, Earth Wind & Fire, and Billy Cobham not only for its visual possibilities on the concert stage, but also the unlimited array of sounds it offers to drummers and percussionists. The key to this is its clever ergonomic design and the extremely velocity sensitive buttons and pads. It has 24 of these buttons and they are all fully assignable to your music software. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to run out to the shops to buy one of these. Each one is custom made, handcrafted, carved from fine woods, assembled and tested by the inventors at Zendrum Corporation. A lot of care and attention goes into the creation of these instruments and for those drummers that want to express their creativity in rhythmic and expressive ways this is definitely worth checking out.

Yamaha Tenori-On

Major Japanese multimedia arts star Toshio Iwai has teamed up with Yamaha to create the Tenori-On, a 16 step, 16 channel music sequencer. At first glance, this looks like a cheap plastic toy with lots of flashing lights. At £599, this certainly isn’t cheap. But its the flashing lights that make this one of the most sought after instruments that is intuitive and provides the user with a “visible music” interface. Select your performance “mode”, press the 16×16 buttons, watch it light up and start making your music. As far as its synthesizer capabilities go, its not the most powerful, with just one oscillator per channel. But if you are looking to creatively combine using a step sequencer into your live performance, this will certain do the job. You can assign separate notes and voices to each “layer”, of which you can have 16 playing all together. Once you have your layers, this then creates a “block” which you can flick between during a live performance. Again, this can be synched to your music software, but is perhaps best for triggering beats, samples and loops rather than using it as a synth. Since its release in 2007, it has generated huge interest from artists such as Bjork, Yoko Ono and more recently little Boots. It is certainly a very striking instrument, and its no surprise that it recently won a place in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Eigenharp Pico

Eigenlabs have recently unveiled their Eigenharp Pico, an ultra versatile instrument that offers new and creatively inspiring ways to play your music software. Imagine a cross between a MIDI controller, clarinet, guitar and keyboard, and you get the Pico. It has 18 keys, a breath pipe and a strip controller, and can be used to record loops, program beats, create arrangements, alter tempo, all while playing live. For such a small instrument, it is amazing what this thing can do. Again, all of its controllers are fully assignable to your music software, although this is limited to smug Mac users at the moment. The keys are touch sensitive and are also sensitive to pressure in both directions. So you could, for example, play a note and wobble the key one way to get a vibrato effect, wobble it the other way and you bend the note. Or change these parameters to any others of your choice. As another example you could assign the breath pipe to a wah effect and the strip controller to filter cutoff. Another great feature is that you can assign the notes to play in a particular mode. So you could set it to play only the blues scale, flamenco, major or minor scales, and then every note you play will be in that scale. You might think this is cheating, seeing as you don’t have spend hours learning your scales anymore, but it definitely makes creative composing and improvising easy, even for someone who has no musical training. The Pico is available for £349 at the moment (due to go up to £399 in Feb 2010), and if you fancy taking it one step further, then look at the Pico’s older brother, the Eigenharp Alpha. This is abut the same size as a guitar and has the same and many more buttons and controllers than the Pico. But as you would expect the price also reflects this, retailing at £3950. I can understand why Eigenlabs claim that this is the instrument of the future. They are currently running a competition for Pico players to win an Alpha. Check out their website at www.eigenlabs.com.