The Seaboard: discreteness and continuity in musical interface design [pdf]
researchonline.rca.ac.uk
researchonline.rca.ac.uk
As a player of both i can attest the continuum takes many of these ideas farther, and encourages uniquely expressive playing as a result.
The design is electrically really interesting as well, it leveraged high precision pressure sensing (hall efect sensors) to construct a much higher x axis resolution than the number of physical sensors. Because a finger always depresses at least three mechanical bars concurrently, the software can draw a parabola through that and calculate the location of the fingertip extremely accurately.
Another instrument that's similar is the Linnstrument from Roger Linn. It's very playable and last I looked was a lot cheaper than the Seaboard or the Continuum. You can turn quantization on or off. The firmware source code is also open source.
I have one, and it's great for learning how to play music, because the silicone pads light up according to the configured musical scale. Really well thought out as an instrument, and I believe it's also open source if you want to hack around with the Arduino microcontroller inside.
[0]: http://www.rogerlinndesign.com/linnstrument.html [1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJyEknT0SnyUr4wdvmObWHQ
It requires more technique adjustment, but you can use pitch rounding (quantization) and other features to make it feasible, and in some ways it’s great that it is different because some piano-like things are actually easier (while others are obviously more difficult)
That being said, there's still something about it that feels "artificial". When I play the guitar, the strings still gives a level of stretch and feedback that it's quite captured with the seaboard's bends.