monome

I have this new obsession. It’s called the monome. I won’t go into tremendous detail about it right now, but you can expect to see some of my monome based experiments here on the AV Club over the next several months as I dig into this device. First, what the heck is it?

The monome is a USB / MIDI / OSC interface. At it’s most basic, it’s a wooden box with a metal faceplate and an 8×8 grid of buttons. There are LED lights under each button.

As you drill into the more complex the monome is a community of musicians, designers, and programmers that utilize the OSC open source protocol that develop a multitude of free applications that do various things like cut and mix samples, offer a DJ deck interface, send MIDI notes based on probability, and function as a step sequencer. The forums are very helpful and active and I’ve found it to be a very friendly community to participate.

In the end it’s a striving effort to make digital music more tactile. We’ll see how it goes.

Here are a few photos of monome, night 1. The homegroup ladies took off for a few hours leaving us guys to wire this beast up and experiment with it. Now that’s my idea of a fun night.

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I’ve been saying I need a new hobby. I’m thinking this may just be it.