I'm also a musician, with a very 80's style MIDI studio at home . This is how I came to build my first arduinome, a fully open source hardware-based musical instrument that works like the monome. It has 64 buttons which light up and a USB interface for connecting it to a computer. That's where the fun starts. It can actually do anything, with the incredible array of open source programs that allow you to link it into your music studio.

Monome bounce video

You can even play tetris.