Long-time MIDI guitar creators Starr Labs have been making amazing tools since 1993, but have only in recent years been starting to get more attention, thanks to artists such as Lou Reed and The Chemical Brothers picking up their instruments and being heavily featured in Australian DnB band Pendulum’s shows. Their most recent creation, the Clipper, adds flash to functionality with RGB LEDs for all keys on the fingerboard.

Besides being designed to control clip launching in Ableton Live in a Launchpad or APC40-like  fashion, one could imagine the fretboard being used as a step sequencer or having the lights blink music visualizations for live show enhancement.

The Clipper. Photo courtesy of Starr Labs

The appearance of the Clipper is the second guitar controller-related news that we’ve had this week, and it marks a shift in preferences for electronic music performers. With the torrent of grid controllers with back-lit buttons coming over us at the moment, a bunch of innovative musicians and engineers are figuring out (and have been figuring out for quite some time, now) that you don’t need to be confined to a table when performing electronic music. Having a tool that you can move around on stage with really evokes the image of a rock star, and the added eye candy of multicolored lights and screens means you don’t have to set your guitar on fire to provide an amazing show.