As many of you are aware of, the West Coast Championship Controller Battle went down last weekend and the DJ Techtools staff was present for full coverage of the event. Although Edison deservingly ended up taking the crown in the end, we all found another competitor’s setup to be one of the most interesting and innovative controllers we have seen to date. So without further ado, let’s introduce Tim Thompson (aka Artful Codger) and his Space Palette, which utilizes a wooden frame and the Microsoft Kinect to create electronic music on the fly with the literal wave of a hand.

heap, ultra-slim, and easy to pop in a backpack, Korg’s nano Series were a big hit. The only real blemish on this line has to be the original nanoKEY; some people managed to use it, but key caps chronically fell off and it wasn’t a whole lot of fun to play. The nanoPAD and nanoKONTROL fared much better, providing pads and faders in a laptop-ready form factor. And since they don’t require drivers, these will also work with new devices like the iPad.