The maker in the article must be an incredibly disciplined and smart person. I’m so impressed.
FWIW, I’m a software developer, and music is my biggest hobby. I bought a foot controller at one point to interact with Ableton, and while I had no specific goals in mind, it is not a walk in the park. I still haven’t figured out how to program a set to do something like “when I get to this part, automatically loop the last 4 bars of incoming audio track X for 16 bars, then play the next clip Y for 8 bars”. I think these are called clip triggers though and should be possible...
Also how much applies to laptopless rig built around Pigtronix /EHX / Boss looper or Elektron boxes.
I did think the fan fret guitar looks a lot like Charlie Hunter's or Ormsby's but maybe he's come up with a better MIDI pickup, that wasn't discussed.