MIDI controller
They most often use a musical keyboard to send data about the pitch of notes to play, although a MIDI controller may trigger lighting and other effects.
MIDI controllers typically have some type of interface that the performer presses, strikes, blows or touches.
The MIDI controller can be populated with any number of sliders, knobs, buttons, pedals and other sensors, and may or may not include a piano keyboard.
[1] This was seen as a limitation by composers who were not interested in keyboard-based music, but the standard proved flexible, and MIDI compatibility was introduced to other types of controllers, including guitars, wind instruments and drum machines.
Most keyboard controllers offer the ability to split the playing area into zones, which can be of any desired size and can overlap with each other.
They allow breath and pitch glide control that provide a more versatile kind of phrasing, particularly when playing sampled or physically modeled wind instrument parts.
[9] Keyboards can be used to trigger drum sounds, but are impractical for playing repeated patterns such as rolls, due to the length of key travel.
[11] A guitar can be fitted with special pickups that digitize the instrument's output and allow it to play a synthesizer's sounds.
Max Mathews designed a MIDI violin for Laurie Anderson in the mid-1980s,[12] and MIDI-equipped violas, cellos, contrabasses, and mandolins also exist.
These typically respond to MIDI clock sync and provide control over mixing, looping, effects, and sample playback.
These include the gesture-controlled Buchla Thunder,[19] sonomes such as the C-Thru Music Axis,[20] which rearrange the scale tones into an isometric layout,[21] and Haken Audio's keyless, touch-sensitive Continuum playing surface.
[24] GRIDI is a large scale physical MIDI sequencer with embedded LEDs developed by Yuvi Gerstein in 2015, which uses balls as inputs.
These enable software instruments to be programmed without the discomfort of excessive mouse movements,[30] or adjustment of hardware devices without the need to step through layered menus.
[30] Audio control surfaces often resemble mixing consoles in appearance, and enable a level of hands-on control for changing parameters such as sound levels and effects applied to individual tracks of a multitrack recording or channels supporting a live performance.
[31] Modifiers such as modulation wheels, pitch bend wheels, sustain pedals, pitch sliders, buttons, knobs, faders, switches, ribbon controllers, etc., alter an instrument's state of operation, and thus can be used to modify sounds or other parameters of music performance in real time via MIDI connections.
The original MIDI specification included 128 virtual controller numbers for real-time modifications to live instruments or their audio.
Such controllers are much cheaper than a full synthesizer and are increasingly equipped with Universal Serial Bus, which allows connection to a computer without a MIDI interface.
