REACTING to the 2024 MIDI INNOVATION AWARDS
Explore ten MIDI Innovation Awards 2024 projects, from foot control and magnetic sequencing to expressive drums, isomorphic keys and proximity sensing.
The MIDI Innovation Awards are a chance to look at musical interfaces beyond a familiar keyboard or pad grid. For this 2024 reaction, I selected ten projects because each suggests a different way to connect a gesture, a sensor and a musical result. This is a personal selection of ideas to study, rather than a ranking of every entrant.
One question runs through the video: how much should an instrument make immediately accessible, and how much room should it leave for developing technique? An easy first sound can be inviting. Long-term expression also depends on what a player can learn to control. These projects approach that balance in very different ways.
Soul Pedal: move MIDI control into a shoe
Soul Pedal puts wireless control under your foot without requiring a conventional pedalboard in front of you. The demonstration connects foot movements and positions with functions such as an effect switch, volume or wah-style control. Feedback helps the player understand the active state.
As a guitarist, I find that change of location interesting: the musical gesture moves with the performer. The practical question is how clearly the movement and its feedback communicate what the effect is doing during a performance.
Demon Box: listen to electromagnetic fields
Demon Box takes a different path. It is an analog instrument that uses inductors to turn electromagnetic activity into sound. Devices such as a phone or hair dryer become sound sources by approaching the sensing surface.
Its appeal is not a familiar note layout. It invites the player to explore electrical objects and their position around the instrument. The reaction introduces the concept; the longer Demon Box conversation explores its architecture and playing possibilities in more detail.
Drumbeam: expression along a percussion surface
Drumbeam takes a drummer’s existing movement and gives it a continuous playing surface. The video highlights how strike position can become another dimension of musical control alongside the impact of a hit.
Instead of treating a strike as only an on/off event, an expressive MIDI controller can connect location with a sound change. That makes the surface useful to think about as an instrument layout, not simply as a row of drum triggers. The dedicated Drumbeam interview explains the sensors and development decisions.
Guitar Thing: familiar gestures in an unfamiliar instrument
Guitar Thing preserves the outline and some gestures of a guitar while adding an exuberant collection of levers, controls and objects. I particularly like the way a control at the tuner position turns a familiar part of the instrument into a different musical action.
The busy, handmade aesthetic is part of its identity. It shows how a new instrument can borrow a musician’s physical vocabulary without needing to reproduce the sound or exact behaviour of the original instrument.
Car MIDI Controller: another direction from the guitar
The Car MIDI Controller also starts from a guitar-like shape, with a much more polished, futuristic appearance. In the demonstration it functions as a MIDI controller for other sound sources.
Placing it beside Guitar Thing is useful because their shared reference leads to very different instruments. The shape alone does not determine the controls, sound or visual language of a project.
Malista: a sequencer you can physically manipulate
Malista uses a rotating structure with magnets and sensors. A magnet passing a sensor can trigger a MIDI note, while the accompanying controls adjust musical properties such as note and velocity. The demonstration also discusses counters that change how often a detected event becomes a drum hit.
The result brings a tangible, turntable-like action into sequencing. Rotation and hand movement become ways of interacting with the pattern, rather than hiding all the timing inside a screen.
MIDI Deck of Cards: identify objects and trigger notes
This project associates cards with tags that a reader can recognise. Bringing a card into position identifies it and triggers a MIDI note; additional controls change settings such as octave.
It is a playful example of building a musical interface because the interaction itself is worth exploring. The useful design lesson is that a MIDI controller does not need to begin with a switch or a piano key. An identifiable object can become the control.
MIDIhex: a keyboard layout with another kind of sensing
MIDIhex combines an isomorphic layout with keys based on familiar keyboard-style mechanisms and Hall-effect sensing. The reaction highlights the possibility of velocity-sensitive playing and microtonal layouts, as well as the value of an open-source project that other builders can study.
An isomorphic arrangement repeats interval relationships across the surface. That changes how a player can approach shapes and scales. The MIDIhex interview goes further into the key mechanism and the development of that layout.
Sway: a playing space above the controller
Sway suggests a theremin-like MIDI interaction, but with a spatial layout that supports several dimensions of movement. Instead of treating the hand as only a single distance reading, the demonstration presents a virtual playing area with positional control.
For a live performer, the interesting possibility is assigning different parts of that movement to notes and sound changes. The reaction discusses that interaction as presented by the entrant; it does not independently verify the accuracy claims made in the promotional clip.
Zen Hemisphere: detect the approaching strike
Zen Hemisphere tackles latency by using proximity sensing before the hand touches its surface. The entrant explains that detecting an approaching hand can trigger the MIDI event a few milliseconds before physical contact, with an adjustable detection point.
“Negative latency” here describes that earlier trigger. It does not make a software instrument process audio instantaneously; it tries to compensate for part of the time between a gesture and its audible result. That is a particularly interesting decision for percussion, where timing is central to the playing feel.
What to take into your next controller design
These projects ask different questions: can an everyday object become a sensor input, can a known instrument gesture acquire another meaning, or can a new sensing method improve timing and expression? For a DIY MIDI controller, choosing that relationship is more useful than adding controls without a musical purpose.
The voting deadline mentioned in the recording belonged to the 2024 event. The enduring value of this selection is the design thinking: identify the gesture you want to play, decide what information the instrument needs to capture, and connect it to a sound that rewards that gesture.
