No, we do not all want to be reduced to brains in a jar. Music has always been about gesture, whether embodied in the breath or touch. So now is the perfect time for the LinnStrument, the human-scaled expressive grid from Roger Linn. Roger writes to point us to some of the latest musical examples and to let us know he’s got a 10% off sale on now.
(Above, some of what Roger has done recently.) I always appreciated the relationship between instrument builders and players, whether historically or now. So it’s great what Roger does with his newsletter, highlighting players from the community and commenting on how he hears their work. This is not a traditional artist relations thing, either, where you try to pick out stars for their following. It’s really a dialogue between a digital luthier and their players.
I especially love these two examples, just for my own aesthetic. Jeff Hopkins’ work is achingly lovely, resulting in a kind of string-keyboard hybrid (even if you just close your eyes and listen). Let’s do listen and get that listen count up, actually. (This and the birds are now on repeat any time I need to recenter!)
I also hadn’t heard of the Dawesome KONTRAST synth heard here, and I agree — it sounds unique, and I’m intrigued!
Accessibility is something I think about constantly. The Bumpy Surface is an ingenious way of making the layout physical, essential for sighted, visually impaired, and blind users. I’ve mentioned it before, but here’s a glimpse of it in action, in what feels like a moment of somber contemplation alone on the Millennium Falcon. (Look, we’ve all been there. Dad cut off our hand or something. At least Dad does have a cool James Earl Jones voice. I digress. That is not “Amazing Grace,” though, at the end.)
That’s also what makes Roger’s endeavor special and worth preserving: even though the Linn name is literally behind the creation of the drum machine (including the MPC60), he still runs an independent business. So it’s well worth passing on a 10% sale — this is a chance to get an instrument you’ll hang onto forever, direct from the person who designed it, and who oh by the way kind of helped invent the entire music tech world we live in!
And he’s not shy about saying why the sale is on. “Why the discount? My sales are down due to the current economic uncertainty from inflation, tariffs and the war.”
10off is the coupon code.
It’s honestly fun just to read the newsletter. Here you go:
https://www.rogerlinndesign.com