Three Surprisingly Cool MIDI Controllers Under
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"D" Envelope, Please

All well and good, but how cool is the DD-55C? Let's see how it rates on the Cool-O-Meter.

Cool: The seven velocity-sensitive triggers feel good to this amateur, and I applaud Yamaha for the nice way the hi-hat trigger works in concert with the foot switch. Although I was originally put off by the sorta cheesy sound of the preset songs, they do offer a nice variety for practice and training.

Not Cool: Clumsy user interface. Audio output is on a single 1/4" TRS (stereo) jack. Tweaking MIDI parameters is a chore. Way not cool: there's only a single user kit!

Surprisingly Cool: Start with a decent set of MIDI drum triggers complete with foot pedal for under three Franklins. Toss in a decent set of samples, hand-percussion playing mode, a General MIDI (GM) sound module for playing back your sequences, and some oddly compelling training tools and you've got a Surprisingly Cool MIDI Controller.

I rate the DD-55C a solid three cubes.

Yamaha EZ-AG EZ Guitar

Looking like the mutant offspring of an acoustic guitar and an escalator, Yamaha EZ-AG has six rows of buttons running down the 12-fret neck, and short unpitched strings running across the soundhole...er, speaker. This is not your average guitar!

The EZ-AG and its sibling, the EZ-EG (as in "Electric Guitar) are intended as learning aids teaching very basic guitar skills. But that's not what makes the EZ-AG Surprisingly Cool: plug in a MIDI cable and you've got a credible MIDI controller that plays like a guitar and costs a fraction of what the competition does.

More on that in a moment; first I want to talk about the EZ-AG in its role as a tutor.

The EZ-AG is also available in an electric-guitar shape, the EZ-EG. (Click here to zoom in on the controls.)

With My EZ-AG on My Knee

The EZ-AG is loaded with 25 songs and practice patterns, complete with drums, bass, melody, and more. While they play, buttons on the first six frets light up to indicate the chord positions. Strumming the six mini strings triggers the chords, or you can tap the fingerboard.

Onboard sounds range from acoustic and electric guitars to basses, piano, banjo, and shamisen. Cool bonus feature: you can choose a virtual capo (±12 half steps) or four alternate tunings: Drop D, Open D, Open G, and Open E. Juice comes through a wall-wart power adaptor, or you can pop in six AA batteries and head for the beach.

Songs include pop staples such as "Day Tripper," "Stand By Me," and "Tears in Heaven." The "Patterns" are standard chord progressions such as I-Vim-Iim-V7 (in this case G-Em-Am-D7). I applaud the variety, but notating chord progressions using Roman numerals might be confusing to beginning guitarists. Heck, I have advanced guitar students who don't understand the concept.

As anyone who has struggled to learn guitar knows, the hardest part is coordinating chords with strums. Yamaha's EZ guitar system breaks down the process, so you can practice strumming without worrying about your left-hand fingering. (Yes it's a right-handed guitar. Lefties must make do with either playing right handed or flipping the axe upside down à la Libba Cotton.) Likewise you can work on just the chords before bringing both hands into play. You can also vary the tempo while you practice.

You'll find chord charts for all the songs at the back of the manual so you can learn the names as you play (see Figure 1).

Fig. 1: This chord chart comes with the EZ-AG. The actual size is still minuscule; I'd suggest making an enlargement—or buying a jeweler's loupe.

Keyboard trainers with lighted keys have been around for a while, and there's even a precedent for guitars with fingerboards that light up. But can someone learn to play in this way?

To test the concept I handed to EZ-AC to a random sampling of adult non-guitarists who happened to be in my studio at that particular moment. Greg, who plays brass and bass for a living, caught on very quickly. Between giggles he said, "I think I could learn to play chords with this." My wife Annie liked that she could isolate her strumming, but she found it confusing to figure out which fingers to use to play the chords. Sadly, the manual doesn't offer much help.

As a teaching tool, the EZ-AG falls short. The songs are too hard for rank beginners and there are no lessons or instructional materials to guide you. Still, it might be just the ticket for getting Junior or Junette interested in playing the guitar before you spring for lessons.

Play That Funky Music, Synth Boy

Back in the day when MIDI guitars were cool (see the MIDI Guitar 101 sidebar), the coolest of the cool was the Yamaha G10. This sleek black monster made no sound of its own; it employed ultrasonic and optical sensors to figure out what you played, transmitting a flurry of MIDI information to a synthesizer or sampler.

Consider the Yamaha EZ-AG Guitar a distant cousin. Yep, the little guy's a MIDI guitar controller, and not a bad one at that. The EZ-AG sends MIDI data on six channels—one per, um, string/switch-path thingie. Picking the short strings adds velocity info. But here's the cool part: tapping the frets sends out low velocity note-on messages, too. Depending on how you set the receiving device, you could use this for all kinds of things—layering sounds, crossfades, or realistic hammer-ons and pull-offs. For some reason, you can't pull-off to an open string, by the way.

MIDI implementation is a tad odd, to say the least. The EZ-AG can transmit a number of Control Changes, including Program Change, Bank Select, Volume, Pan, and Portamento. But there's no obvious way to do any of it. (The slightly more expensive EZ-EG has a whammy bar for pitch bends.) Help's on the way: a growing cadre of EZ-Guitar enthusiasts on the web has developed hacks to utilize these hidden MIDI potentials (see the Links).

Because the switches are always active, it's very easy to generate false triggers—short duration, low-velocity notes that are the bane of MIDI guitarists. (See Figure 2.) Oddly, the EZ-AG spits out a stream of SysEx (System Exclusive MIDI data) as you play. I'm afraid I haven't a clue why, as I opted to configure my software to filter it out instead.

It's all too easy to accidentally start one of the practice songs if you play around the 12th fret, even with Local Control off (i.e., with the internal sound generator disconnected). The good news is that changing the tuning does affect the MIDI output, which is handy for scoring songs in alternate tunings.

The only way to load or delete the play-along songs is with Yamaha's Song Filer app. As I mentioned in the DD-55C review, a sizeable portion of the computer world can't use it.

Quibbles aside, the EZ-AG works just fine as a MIDI controller. Check out the following example, a fingerpicked county blues as played on an electric piano sound.

• EZ-AG Fingerpicked Electric Piano (448KB MP3)

Cool Hand Luke...Warm

So how does the EZ-AG stack up on Uncle Mark-o's Cool-O-Meter?

Cool: It's pretty addictive, actually. I keep grabbing it and noodling around when I should be doing something productive. Although the light-up-frets approach isn't the ideal way to teach guitar, I think it's a good practice tool for older kids. The virtual capo and alternate tunings are nice additions.

Not Cool: Boy howdy, does the neck feel flimsy! Simply playing an F chord bends and twists it out of shape to an alarming degree. Only the first six frets light up when you touch them, which gets distracting as you play up the neck. There's no real lesson plan. Most of the songs are too hard for beginning students. You can't pull-off to an open string. Songs don't include lead practice.

Surprisingly Cool: It's a MIDI guitar controller that doesn't break the bank. Yamaha could sell a ton of these if they crowed loudly about the MIDI features. Oh, did I mention it's got a complete General MIDI sound bank, too?

I give it two Ice Cubes.

Alesis PhotonX25 USB MIDI Controller and Stereo Audio Interface

Time to wire up the rest of the band. The Alesis Photon X25 combines a remarkably full-featured keyboard controller with a USB audio and MIDI interface. It sports 25 full-size, synth-action keys and a full battery of programmable knobs and switches for MIDI continuous controller data. It runs on USB bus power, batteries, or an optional power adapter. It's small enough to toss in a gig bag with a laptop for a dandy live rig. It's compact, sturdy, looks great, and the buttons and mod wheel light up the same color as the gauges on a Mini Cooper. And it's got this keen infrared AXYZ Dome that responds to your hand position for three-way MIDI control! Yep, I'm reaching for the ice bucket already.

The Alesis Photon X25 is a 24-bit audio interface as well as a MIDI controller.