As I’m going through all the responses for the Propellerhead Record beta, I couldn’t help but notice this image, taken in Lima, Peru this month. Sure, you can claim that Propellerhead’s software looks too much like analog gear, that racking up lots of instruments and effects together (especially now, with parallel racks in Record) leads to visual clutter. But then, that mish-mash of knobs and colored panels looks, well, a lot like this Lima electronics market.

Interestingly enough, the photographer notes these are all homegrown efforts, unique DIY electronics. A theme that comes up every time I talk to folks in South America is a reminder that they can’t always afford the latest-and-greatest modern tech. And, of course, neither can a lot of us on the other continents — hey, here in the US, we’re paying off loans, debt, and health insurance bills. So I do think the DIY world will continue to spawn things people themselves can use. An oft-overlooked driver of the open source software movement remains the desire to create something for yourself, even in the shadow of titans like Red Hat, IBM, Sun, and Novell, who stand to reap big business rewards. With the interest in these things exploding, as well as indie commercial development, hardware and software alike can be thought of as a virtual analog to this rack of strange Peruvian sonic gear.

It certainly reveals something essential about the drive to decorate your audio creations, and to make them unique. Hardware or software, it’s hard not to look at this and want to go make some crazy noises.

Yes, you can wow crowds playing with laptops — especially when you perform synth lines with drumsticks. (Pity some of us are worse drummers than keyboardists; this solution would definitely not work for me!)

As it happens, Gustavo’s email hits the night of a MIDI controller “brain dump” at the Warper Party here in New York City. That’s tonight, Monday, at 7pm. It’s basically just an informal hang, but we can hopefully demonstrate the cooling effect of thinking about MIDI on this blazingly hot day. The event has something extra to recommend it: namely, me wearing some kind of absurdly silly hat involving a circuit board. I’m not even sure what this means yet, but I’ll be sure there are pictures so we can embarrass me internationally and not just locally.

Alternative controllers aren’t the only way to go. There’s also taking the controllers you have now, and attaching more of them, then programming them into a monster, eight-keyboard rig of M-Audio Oxygen8s so that partygoers can try their hands controlling Ableton Live. That’s what my co-host tonight at Warper, Matt Moldover, does with his Octamasher. Here’s a video from Austin, Texas. It shows anyone can get their hands dirty playing with Live.

Moldover