There are a plethora of MIDI controllers available in todays music industry, but I have seen nothing like the Monome 40h. At first glance I thought it wasn’t anything special as it just looks like a bunch of lit up square buttons in an enclosure. I would have forgotten about it and never looked back if it didn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before. After reading more about it, I was fascinated by the product as the functionality and capabilities of this controller are potentially endless (I’ll explain a little later.) Here is what the Monome 40h looks like:
The 64 backlit buttons can be configured as toggles, radio groupings, sliders, or organized into more sophisticated systems to monitor and and trigger sample playback position. The really cool thing about the Monome 40h is that the physical controller gets routed through a hardware chip inside that has an open source code to it and numerous applications can be loaded onto it to perform a variety of complex functions which interact with an audio plugin that is hosted by a DAW like Logic 9, or Ableton 8.0 (Ableton is the preferred host for the Monome but others can be used.). Its kind of hard to explain but here are a few descriptions of the applications from the Monome.org website:
applications and interfacing
we’ve designed numerous applications and patches which exemplify the 40h as a simultaneous input and output device. several are musically-inclined, though the interface also fits wonderfully into alternative uses. all of our applications are open-source and no additional purchase is necessary to use them. here are a few examples:
- 64step is a versatile step sequencer aimed at fluid composition and editing.
- mlr is a sample-cutting platform intended for dynamic and performative live manipulation.
- life is an interactive version of conway’s original simulation.
- phoenix is a probabilistic arpeggiator with a drawable waveform.
also available are routing applications which allow the 40h to be seen as a standard midi controller, for interfacing with commercial software.
I know the above is probably confusing to some who may read this so here is a video of one of my friends, Derek Smith, from the band “Pretty Lights” from YouTube. By the way you should check out hit music its pretty sick. Pretty Lights
This guy is amazing… and so is the Monome. The Monome Derek is using in the video is the 128 with the MLR application running. The application pretty much cuts a full sample into quantized parts that span a row and different samples can be on different columns. There is one column on the very left side which tempo and start/stop times of the patterns you input throught the monome (its basically a step sequencer too.)
Whats cool about the monome is that since it is open source, people have replicated the actual hardware by using the open source Arduino microchip which the applications can run of. They call it the Arduinome. I will post another DIY blog build after the new years as I am going to build one of these from scratch. The reason I am doing this is because a) Ive always wanted a monome because they can add so much versatility to ones music especially in the live setting. and b) The Monome 40h is $499 and the one I am building is going to cost me $138 plus my time for labor. Now this is going to be a huge build which will span about two weeks to a month so I am really excited about building it. The first post of the build will go up tonight.
This thing is really cool, and if my build turns out good enough, I am going to start producing them and selling them as the profit margin is huge, and they can be produced in a fashion that allows multiple products to be built at once. Anyway I’m really excited and it should turn out well. Til’ next time.
~Andy
p.s. All of Pretty Lights music is free on their website and his beats are sick so check em’
