Meet LinnStrument, an expressive MIDI controller for musical performance. Unlike a standard piano MIDI keyboard's on/off switches, LinnStrument senses your fingers’ subtle movements in five ways, enabling musical performance expression rivaling that of fine acoustic instruments. Unlike the simple on/off switches of a MIDI piano keyboard, LinnStrument's patented touch-sensing technology permits you to slide in pitch directly from one note to another, tilt your finger forward/backward for subtle timbral variation, and vary note loudness with pressure or velocity, all sensitive to very light touches.

So LinnStrument's notes are arranged as on any stringed instrument. Each row is a series of consecutive semitones, so bends and pitch slides are simple and intuitive: play a note, slide left or right to the destination note, then wiggle it for vibrato.

You can tune the rows like a guitar, violin or however you wish. By default they are tuned in musical fourths (five semitones), like a bass guitar with 8 strings. To make it easy to find the right notes, the scale notes are lit, with all the C note pads lit in a different color and having a Braille-size bump for tactile feedback. Alternatively, you can light any scale and in any of 10 colors.

The Fourths String Layout has other advantages over the piano keyboard:
1) It's isomorphic, meaning that the same chord or scale fingering works in all musical keys.
2) There are multiple instances of each pitch, permitting solo and accompaniment play in the same pitch range, and a variety of fingerings for each chord or scale.
3) 5 octaves (on the large model) fit in a playing surface that's only 18.7 inches (475 mm) wide.