By Karsten Strauss, Forbes Staff

Sleek, seemingly simple, musical and groundbreaking. That’s Keith McMillen’s world. The man has been walking the line between artist and inventor since 1979. With his new company, Keith McMillen Instruments (KMI), he’s looking to revolutionize the way people control their music through technology and his products seem to be attracting a following. Right now the company’s two best known products are its QuNeo – a touch-sensitive controller that allows players to makes beats, launch sound clips, remixes and generally control their electronically-stored sounds – and the QuNexus, a portable, pressure-sensitive keyboard that alters notes you play depending on how hard you strike the keys and whether you vibrate your fingers while playing a note. The company also has a Bluetooth enabled violin bow called K-Bow. “I’ve been building instruments for a while,” McMillen told me over the phone. “If you make something that allows expression in a natural way, an exciting way, provides feedback to the artist and gives an advantage, people will come to love these instruments.” People have come to love these instruments, he says, claiming that KMI is enjoying seven figure sales and growing between at least 250% per year since it began building products four years ago. The products were sold in 60 stores nationwide before Guitar Center picked them up. Now KMI products sell in 540. McMillen sold his last company, an internet audio signal processing company called Octiv, to Plantronics in 2005, took the money and played music for a couple of years on tour. That time on the road convinced him that the cumbersome instruments he and his band were dragging around from show to show needed to be smaller, lighter and more efficient—essentially upgraded and dragged into the future. He set about building those instruments, which led to his current venture, KMI, in 2007, and he’s since released ten products. “I hear sounds in my head and I have to figure out how to perform them and that’s driven me for the last 30 plus years in making new instruments,” he said. “If it’s a complicated project I‘ll start a company around it.” McMillen’s founded his first company, Zeta Music, in 1979 and created the first MIDI-capable electric violin, essentially heralding a new instrument market, as well as the first programmable mixer. He sold the company to Gibson in 1989 and stayed on with the music instrument firm, heading up one of its R&D labs called G-WIZ.  He went on to work with UC Berkeley’s CNMAT and created a new technology group focusing on audio networking, synthesizers and string instruments before taking a job as director of engineering at Harman Kardon. To fund its QuNexus project, the company raised $45,000 on Kickstarter this past winter, and, a year prior, had raised $166,000 on the crowdfunding platform to fund QuNeo. KMI raised $1.6 million in a series A this spring and could look to raise more in the future, though McMillen said he’s not seeking additional capital just yet. Follow me on Twitter …read more

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