This electric guitar is a MIDI controller that turns you into a music wizard

You’ll still need musical knowledge and skill, of course, but you might make other things you have some superpowers with this cool electric guitar.

Not everyone can play more than two or more instruments, but many musically skilled people can control electronic instruments without actually knowing how to use the real things. There are going to be some differences, of course, but there is a serious and professional field of music that involves these electric and electronic soundscapes. These devices are usually operated using MIDI controllers. They look like geeky boards with lots of buttons and sliders. Or, at best, a plain keyboard. The Ni28, in contrast, looks more like a very stylish and cool electric guitar, and using it will probably make you look like some music god that can produce all kinds of music and sounds with something that looks like the skeleton of a guitar.

Designer: Joris Wegner

MIDI controllers often need two kinds of controls. One is for toggling certain settings or firing off some actions, while another set of controls maps to pitches like notes on a scale. That’s why most MIDI controllers take the form of keyboards with additional buttons, sliders, and switches because these more easily translate to the kind of things that the controller needs to communicate with. You don’t have to use a keyboard. Sometimes, a guitarist can be more effective, particularly when you are performing live.

The Ni28 Electronic Guitar does exactly that and could give the player the look and the feeling of being a rockstar god. Instead of strings and frets, however, the entire neck of the guitar has a matrix of nickel-plated (hence the name) brass plates that can activate nodes when touched. Unlike with a typical stringed instrument like a guitar, you don’t need to exert much pressure to cause an activation. To achieve the same result, you can either bridge the plates adjacent to each other or lightly touch one of the strings on the waist.

This design has quite a few advantages. For one, you don’t need muscle memory to play music like on a regular guitar, though you do need to remember which frets do which. A gentle tapping is enough to activate the plate. You don’t have to strain your fingers. This makes it easier to use even compared with a keyboard where you do still have to exert some force to press down on a key. You can dance your fingers over the guitar and make it appear that you are producing magical music.

There’s also an advantage to how such a guitar can be physically designed since all the electronics are confined inside the neck of the guitar. You can use the body as a skeleton or frame, or you can swap it out for another design. Because there is no acoustics, it has no impact on output and performance. This allows you to focus on aesthetics and looks that are crucial for a great stage performance.