In case you haven’t seen it, Nine Inch Nails has taken to the multi-touch Lemur control surface and More Buttons Than Thou top-end Monome. There’s a short video of an experiment combining the two with a real (MIDI-enabled) Yamaha piano. It’s just under a minute, but already evocative — I’m not entirely sure why Alessandro […]

Little. Simple. Different. Better. Or at least, 100 people sure think so. … so I’ll make this a two-minute post. Yes, it seems the Monome 64, the cute, new, and improved 8×8 Monome, sold out its short initial run in one hundred twenty seconds and fried the order system. I’m guessing the low price, growing […]

All Kaoss, All the Time: In a world of endless choices, what happens to the creative power of limitations? Back in November, we saw Norman Fairbanks make an album entirely on Tenori-On, Yamaha’s interactive blinking-lights button pad. “Ah,” you said. “But that sounds suspiciously like the music of Toshio Iwai, the Tenori-On’s composer-inventor. And it […]

From ribbons to multi-touch, musicians are looking for expressive controllers, ones that allow continuous control for performance. Oh, yeah, and it’s like totally super-cool on the original Star Trek when people run their hands over the Transporter controls and the blinky lights move. I mean, like still super-cool, even in 2008. (Hint: try to look […]

If you missed the chance to make a custom Monome kit the first time, you’ll get a second chance! From the Monome site: the 40h kit allows users to assemble their own 40h-compatible device. the kit includes the circuits and keypads, requiring the use to create an enclosure and top plate. we produced 100 units […]

The Monome‘s clean-slate grid of light-up buttons has proven a huge hit, not only among musicians but multimedia artists in general. It’s been such an Internet sensation that many people assume some significant company is behind it. In reality, part of the clarity of the design comes from the homemade approach to design and construction, […]

The original Monome 40h music (and other media) controller has been replaced by new models, led by the new 256, a 16×16 grid. The buttons are smaller, retaining the approximate size and form factor of the original, but you get more buttons, a wooden case, and other improvements. Pre-orders are set for September 26. Lots […]

A box covered with buttons and lights can be much more. Such it is with the Monome, the open source controller for music and multimedia. Beloved for its simplicity, the Monome continues to earn fans. The original 40h is gone, but as we’ve seen here, a new line of models is coming to satisfy your […]

Our friend David Phipps of Sound Tribe Sector 9 (STS9) has posted video of how he’s using his custom-built Monome, as featured in a tutorial here on CDM a few months ago: In this application, the Monome is effectively an interactive sequencer; it works very elegantly in that capacity. Next step: David, in the spirit […]

In just over a year, the open source Monome hardware has become a cult hit among musicians. A grid of buttons seems deceptively simplistic; I have to admit I was skeptical at first. But the Monome has spread by word of mouth because this simple design can be elegant, because the build quality and touch […]