[franky47]

I remember at NAMM about 10 years ago, the company I worked for made a touchscreen-based mixing console.

The CEO insisted to have Stevie Wonder try it. What surprised me is that he (SW) looked impressed doing so, moving virtual faders on a glass screen with no tactile feedback.

That was my first realization that music is a business like any other, and getting a famous person doing a PR stunt for your product may be beneficial, even though they're not at all the intended consumer.

But also, SW was using his ears more than his fingers to get the feedback the product was lacking, and so what started as a bad joke made me respect him even more.

[unwind]

Uh in case someone doesn't know. Stevie Wonder is blind. Having him test a non-tactile instrument is non-obvious at best.

Obviously he has a couple of metric tons of experience as a musician so can probably make a potato sound interesting, but still ... odd choice.

[Zuider]

Stevie wonder was one of the pioneers of the Fairlight Synthesizer, which was possible for him to use because it used a text interface navigated by arrow keys, rather than a fiddly GUI with unpredictable placement of drop-down menus. Arguably, a touch-screen GUI would have the same predictability (because of consistent placement of active elements) as the Fairlight text screen. In short, rather than being a tasteless joke or a stunt, it was an instrument that he could profitably use, which was demonstrated by the fact that he actually could use it.