10 Stupidly Fun Toys Every Musician Needs

6. MIDI Guitar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKcKQb_aywM What if you're a guitarist that wants to be a keyboard or synth player? What if you don't want to spend the required amount of time learning how to play a keyed instrument? Well fear not, the MIDI guitar is what you need in your life. MIDI guitars have been around for a little while but they're still very much a niche device. Most of them are plastic and resemble something like a Rock Band guitar peripheral, just with more buttons. What they tend to consist of is a guitar-based shape, six short strings in the picking area and a 'fretboard' consisting of buttons representing each string and fret. You connect the guitar to a laptop or MIDI interface and simply enough just choose a sound you want to play with. You can use a MIDI guitar for almost anything; synths, pianos, strings, samples, anything you could possibly want. It allows guitarists to expand their sound without having to relearn how to play another instrument. Obviously there are some limitations. You can't do bends as there is no string to bend, depending on your choice of synth you may not be able to play chords (or you might have to simplify them at any rate) and they can be a bit fiddly to set up, depending on which model you use. But for the creative musician, and especially in a recording context, they can be superbly fun and staggeringly useful.