Kelli Cain and Brian Crabtree are celebrating the 20th anniversary of their monome company and project this week. For anyone moved by their creations over the years, there will be no escape from the feels in this gallery — and, of course, I couldn’t resist adding some extra memories from that era.

In its bones, Eterna for monome norns returns to some of the original success of monome: doing imaginative, intuitive, musical things with slices. A single audio file transforms via 6-voice sampler/sequencer and 12-page interface into everything from delicate ambient textures to detailed grooves.

The iconic monome grid just got native support from Cycling ’74’s RNBO, the patching tool for exporting Max sounds on other hardware and software environments. There’s a fun, free example patch to get you started, too.

monome – the iconic grid and the project that produced it – are having a nice summer. Hardware is being assembled. And even if you’ve got zero money, you can give monome tools a try in the free VCV Rack grid, including on-screen grids, the powerfully programmable teletype module, and more.

It’s an even more performative monome. Creator sonocircuit has built a new take on the monome norns/grid app mlr, adding new macros, transposition, LFOs, and lots more.

There’s a new monome, same as the old monome, pre-ordering this summer: “we’ve redesigned the grid, again. but this time almost everything is new, even though we added nothing.”

It’s a rig in the dirt, on a budget, with some beautiful music. DIY forest sounds are go. Now that we took a mental trip to a crowded Berlin bar playing hard EBM, let’s go instead into the woods with some open tools and very lovely leafy ambient. Just listen and watch: Perplex On out […]

What if Conway’s Game of Life, a Tamigotchi, a Turing machine, a Game Boy, and a stack of ecology and philosophy books got mixed up in a transporter accident and then spawned… a new monome program? Well, it’d probably look like this.

It’s a rarified way of making music – the ultra-minimal monome grid and norns open music platform. But what is it really about? We turn to reviewer Andreas Roman to find out.

The monome made history by transforming the virtual world of the computer into a low-fidelity grid of lights and buttons. But it’s no less magical today – especially in the hands of stretta.