I don’t know about that. I’m a career guitarist, and I took to the LinnStrument immediately. With a little diligence, I was playing proficiently within a couple weeks. To which end, as far as leads are concerned, I can play considerably faster on the LinnStrument than I can on the guitar. And I started my career as a reputable “shredder”, so I can make a direct comparison there.
The LinnStrument is easily the most efficient and forgiving musical interface I’ve ever used.
Cheers!
I am not surprised to read that you’ve become proficient very fast with the Linnstrument, given that as a career guitarist, this type of layout is certainly very familiar to you.
I’ve written my post as a 30+ years of “non-career” piano player and reeducation with the Linnstrument was challenging at first. Ironically, some melodies are indeed much faster to play on the Linnstrument than on the piano.
Btw my second post about guitarists was meant as a joke, naturally, or more particularly as an expression of frustration when reading guitar scores.
I can certainly understand how someone coming from a piano background might find the LinnStrument to be a challenge at first.
I think the one thing that piano players come to take for granted is running arpeggios and leads with spread voicings. To which end, I recommend using a sustain pedal with the LinnStrument, in the same way that you would on a piano.
After you get to grips with spotting nonadjacent notes on the LinnStrument though, I’m confident that you’ll quickly find the isomorphic layout to be a HUGE advantage; because, unlike on the piano, every key signature looks the same on the LinnStrument.
That said, I willfully complicate things by using actual “guitar” tuning on mine; but that’s just because I already know where all the notes are, and that way everything I play on one instrument is immediately transferable to the other.
Cheers!
I would love to play this in “open D” guitar tuning, does it let you do custom layouts like that?
Yes.
You can tune each ‘row’ as you would otherwise tune each ‘string’ on any stringed instrument.
I actually use a custom guitar tuning, with the two lowest rows tuned to my liking, rather than your typical 8-string guitar tuning. I mean, seriously, no one wants to contend with a low F# …
Cheers!
It has been a challenge and rather than seeking one layout to rule them all, I tend to use the Linnstrument for things I can’t (easily) do on a key-based controller, including the Osmose: more convincing bass parts, spontaneous long slides of any relevant length, polyphonic slides and vibratos, etc.
On the other hand, the lack of an isomorphic layout on the piano also enables other interesting expressive techniques, not easily performed on the LS, such as for example:
This said, the Linnstrument is an excellent and highly versatile synth controller. I’ve found that it has changed my way of thinking about synths and sounds. And most importantly, it also enables a keyboardist to look almost as cool as the guitarist on stage 