Roger Linn Linnstrument

[Rubin Farr]

First batch is sold out!

 

http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2014/11/02/roger-linn-linnstrument-goes-on-sale-already-nearly-sold-out/

[awepittance]

oh good he decided to put in midi in/out. the earlier iterations of the product were usb only

[picklish]

I learned a bit of piano as a kid and always had used midi keyboards, then i took a year of guitar lessons recently, then bought the LinnStrument, by far the most I've ever spent on gear, I prefer grotty scratchy and badly soldered tat than shiny £££ synths but i'd been keen on getting a roli seaboard and then thought "fuck it just spunk your furlough coin, we're all gonna die"

And its feckin great! When picking up the guitar at first the layout is so much more intuitive than trying to find chords on a piano, and the LinnStrument copies that isomorphism, but also the keys feel sort of obvious somehow, like its easy to know where to go and what to do, what pressure to point on, how to slide. Also feeling like an actual instrument as in you have to put the hours in to get good at it is no bad thing.

I know theres that psychological thing where you convince yourself something is better the more you spend on something but I'm not sure im falling into that trap. I haven't really explored the MPE aspect of it much, just used it as a controller for Reason and an Axoloti but its great for that

 

[Braintree]

What happens when you hook it up to a drum machine?

[TubularCorporation]

Same thing as if you hook up a keyboard to a drum machine.

[Braintree]

Lame.

[TubularCorporation]

What did you expect to happen when you hook a MIDI controller up to a drum machine?

[YEK]

L o l

[Braintree]

12 hours ago, TubularCorporation said:

What did you expect to happen when you hook a MIDI controller up to a drum machine?

From the nature of the instrument itself, it looks like you can glide your finger and trigger midi events. That could be useful to set up some beats that are offbeat and avant garde.

Especially if you're making circles or other shapes with your finger.

Or you could hook it up to a sampler and trigger weird beats in the same fashion.

Or daisy chain a synth into it and trigger both at the same time. I'm just spitballing here.

[TubularCorporation]

Oh yeha, you can definitely do that

also the step sequencer is pretty simple but IIRC it has an interesting simple drum mode.

 

It took me 7 months of saving to get oen of these back in 2018 and another 15 or so months of saving, collecting parts and building to get a really good MPE synth to go with it but it was absolutely worth it, changed how I approach electronic music a lot.

 

Roger Linn's demos are always kind of uninspiring but here's him showing the drum mode:

 

 

I've never tried it. It seems like it's a bit like using the roll mode + aftertouch on an old MPC, but with more control.

 

Linn ironically hates sequencers and all of the sequencing was patched in after the fact because of customer demand, so it's pretty minimal but what he did put in works well.

[Braintree]

That actually makes me want to get one and try out some ideas.

[TubularCorporation]

It's really good.