ABSTRACT
Now that the end of the book is in sight I will confess: I am not the raving anti-digital Luddite you might take me for aft er all these pages. I actually don’t mind computers-in fact I’ve been making music with them since before the Apple was a twinkle in the collective Jobs and Wozniak eye. Th e issue for me has always been how to play them: sometimes an ASCII keyboard and a mouse don’t give you enough control, or the right kind of control; sometimes you want to play something that feels less like a typewriter and more like a musical instrument (with apologies to Leroy Anderson). Of course you can use a MIDI interface to connect any commercial MIDI controller to your computer, but your choices are usually limited to piano-like keyboards, mis-triggering guitars, the odd pseudo-saxophone, and a handful of truly alternative controllers created by a few die-hard visionaries (see “Th e Luthiers”).
