I’ve been having an Exquis here for some time, since I have been helping Intuitive Instruments with the UI of their 2.0 companion app.
I don’t have a lot of experience with isomorphic controllers (it’s my first one), but I have been interested in this approach for some time, and I have to say that I’m quite happy with it.
Those of you who are a bit more experienced with this approach might have more a nuanced opinion I guess, but for me these aspects stand out:
- It’s compact and the pads feel decent, a bit rubbery, but the response is pretty good in my opinion.
- It’s fully MPE compatible, but works as a “1.0 MIDI” controller as well, with poly aftertouch.
- It’s great for beginners, since it highlights the root note and the default layout is pretty intuitive. It’s really easy to make chords.
- If you don’t change the layout, your notes are always going to be in the same place, this helps with building up muscle memory. Changing the scale or root merely changes which notes are highlighted. So once you have some practice with it, you could as well use it without any notes being highlighted.
- A few minor things: despite being very compact it has regular MIDI in and OUT, so it also works well for hardware instruments.
- You can make any kind of layout with the app, for example drum layouts.
I initially struggled with the vertical form factor, but after using it for some time, I got quite used to it, and found it to be quite practical, since it takes up less horizontal space on my busy desk. You can of course use it horizontally as well and if the layout feels unpractical, it can be easily changed using the app.
One thing I need to explore some more is how this works for non-western tunings and scales.