Nice to see boutique companies doing their thing here at Musikmesse 2014, and this little Ableton controller looks like some kind of radar scanner, with its bulbous top half. The Crystall-Ball, from French company Naonext, is in fact a controller with five optical sensors built into that globe, as well as the usual control keys and so on, and is perfect for putting some “performance” back into your live electronic music, particularly when used to modulate drum patterns and the like with software like Ableton Live. The demo shows it off well, so enjoy! More on their website.
Do you like the idea of incorporating this kind of instrument into your DJing/production work? Is it good in your opinion that companies are thinking more about how we can perform electronic music live, rather than just the button-pushing method? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Phil Morse
