If you’ve got a whole bunch of colored lights, it seems only right to do something with them. Cacheflow sends a fun little hack with a Novation Launchpad. Of course, turning a Launchpad into a live EQ display means you can’t simultaneously use its lights to, like, play the Launchpad, but provided you have another controller, this could be a fun way to liven up your stage setup.

We looked at a free e-book on Processing last week; if you’re playing with Processing, you can now use a handy, free library to integrate this simple and elegant coding tool with your Launchpad.

The ingredients:

Music: unreleased Yo Soy Sauce tune.
plasticsoundsupply.com/​release/​yo_soy_sauce_-_juke_box/​

Built with the following components:
processing.org
tree-axis.com/​Ess/​
rngtng.github.com/​launchpad/

By the way, I’ve noticed a lot of great GitHub use for music projects. Music Hack Day Montreal even did their event planning on it. I wonder, is there a way – using GitHub itself or a hack with the GitHub API – for us all to build a little CDM community there? Git gurus, I’d love to hear from you about what you might like.

Lovers of the grid for music control now get to reenact the scene in MGM’s The Wizard of Oz, stepping out of the world of black and white into one of color. The OhmRGB, the latest controller from Austin, Texas-based controller and custom hardware shop Livid Instruments, adds multicolor LEDs behind its array of controls.

We’ve already seen red, green, and yellow add color feedback on Novation’s Launchpad (and of course the APC line from Akai). The Livid piece bests Novation’s three colors with seven possibilities. For those who prefer their grids to come with knobs, faders, and crossfader, the OhmRGB has the same generous complement of controls that its (monochromatic) Ohm64 sibling does. It also has expansion ports for additional flexibility, plugs into USB connectivity and power without the need for drivers, and has extensive options for remapping lights, controls, and interaction, so it works dynamically not only with Ableton Live but any tool you like. Livid also does their woodwork and assembly in Austin, Texas – keeping the shop on-site was a wise business move, believe me.

In the top video, you can see artist Pailo do a quick demo; obviously, you could perform with this however you want. In the video below, the Livid gang explain a bit about how they’ve made the Ohm64 RGB work with Ableton Live:

This video is presented by Pailo and shows how you can use it with OhmModes, a sophisticated remote script for Ableton Live

Jay Smith from Livid has some other comments – and even those seven colors aren’t necessarily the limit:

Currently it supports 7 colors, we plan on adding more with a firmware update in the future. It has the same expansion jacks the Block [controller] has, we plan on making side cars for it later this year. Also we’ve added banking so you can save multiple mappings to the internal memory of the controller.

And here’s a video that shows why the expansion ports are cool:

Want one? Check it out at Livid Instruments:
http://lividinstruments.com/hardware_ohmrgb.php

US$699, available now direct or via your dealer.

More RGB Action!

While Livid doesn’t make hardware that can be technically qualified as open source, they have built a strong relationship with the DIY community. Their software patches, built in Max/MSP, are available under an open source license, and their hardware is well-suited to hacking and modification. And beyond the finished products themselves, they’ve got a full-blown DIY platform called Builder and have generally built a good relationship with DIYers through their shop and interaction with the community.

All of that is to say, there’s a lot happening with exploring what grid controllers can be as hardware hackers and musicians take matters into their own hands. Unlike the OhmRGB, you can’t easily go out and buy one of these at the moment, but it’s fantastic to see the rainbow (ahem) of control experimentation out there.

Thanks in particular to Mutis Mayfield, aka Mudo de Nacimiento, who helped remind us of some of the major RGB grid efforts to date. Mudo himself is working a project, seen in the image below.

Clarification/correction: Mudo adds some notes on that project:

I had to say that the project in the picture wasn’t mine, to be exact I’m part of the project as a free-lancer taking the task of community management and concept designer for the software implementation with third party softwares.

This project started as a revision for the Octinct from Jonathan, Owen and Jordan whit the aim to give a Octinct unit to some artist at Hangar.org over workshop over the Sonar(matica) 2009 (these workshops were free admitance) but it was evolving into a new project (with new design for the boards) which is the one from the picture.

We expect more information on that project soon.

I have to start out with the insanely-awesome Polynome 5000. It’s about the dreamiest color controller I can imagine, a one-off monome by capricorn one, aka Los Angeles-based monome musician and inventor Colin Mann. Colin describes it thusly:

After more hours than I’d like to admit, even if I actually knew how many, I’m done. I started this, believe it or not, before the APC40 was even announced, and at the time there weren’t many products out there like it. Now, obviously it would make more sense to just buy one of those products, nevertheless, where are you gonna get an RGB monome with a nixie tube display that takes OSC commands? Exactly.

FEATURES
RGB monome (64 buttons, 64 colors)
6 slide faders
1 infrared sensor
1 touch strip sensor
4 arcade buttons (internally lit)
1 toggle switch
4 digit nixie tube display
12 button keypad
xlr microphone pass through
6 port usb hub (powered)
4 external power jacks
1 12VDC power output source

Don’t miss Colin’s huge post on the topic; see also video below.

http://www.capricorn1.net/avr/polynome-5000/

Next up, another DIY project — from artist and hacker BIM0X, the Rainbow:

Presentation of my new MIDI controller : the Rainbow.
Soft touch buttons Monome like, each one has a RGB Led inside.
64 buttons, 7 colours available. Based on midibox (www.ucapps.de)

Powered by PIC18F452. Completley independent, it doesn’t need a computer to work.
Midi and output via MIDI messages

Open source RGB grids?

Owen Vallis and Jordan Hochenbaum, aka FlipMu, have been working on their own open source project. It’s not just RGB – it’s also pressure-sensitive, a feature generally missing from these sorts of grid controllers, adding a whole new dimension of possible expression.

Owen shares some other comments, and walks us through yet more RGB and even pressure-sensitive projects:

The Livid stuff is always awesome I think. I’m all for more DIY or any open source projects. There have been a lot of RGB style button grids over the last several years, starting with the Octinct from Johnaton Guberman and Brad Hill ( <-- the original Arduinome Shield designer). The Octinct was finally made open source last year and is now being worked on by the guys at Hanger.org. There was also the RGB mini Monome by Grumpy Mike at the arduino forums (vimeo video), and also the Lumi from stanford which combined pressure and a touch screen using the spark fun RGB pads in a 4×8.

The Chronome is different (and has been taking so long) because it not only uses a Mega (hopefully allowing for expansion later), but also adds 64 independent pressure and RGB buttons. Trying to solve for noise on the ADC while lighting all 64 RGB leds was super hard to solve ….but it works now woop woop. The other major thing is that the Chronome works natively with SerialOSC from monome, and still works the exact same as a regular monome. The only difference is the Chronome also accepts an RGB message, and send an additional pressure message. This means the Chronome should work with all existing monome apps.

The Chronome, based on the open-source Arduinome project also from FlipMu, is progressing nicely. You can track its progress – and even try your hand at building it yourself – on the FlipMu site and blog (hosted by createdigitalmusic):

http://flipmu.noisepages.com/blog/
http://flipmu.noisepages.com/work/chronome/ [beta, but with loads of files for your use if you're brave]

Here are some of the projects Owen mentions:

The best resource I could find on the now-open-source Octinct project is on the monome forums:
Official Octinct Package Thread

It points at where to find the newly-released documentation, code, PCBs, and whatnot.

Also, there’s one further device that may be available commercially, though, for now, it remains mysterious. The Electrix Tweaker has specs similar to the OhmRGB, but we’re still waiting for it to ship, and have only the grainy image seen here.

So, there you have it – color is coming to grids in a big way. We’ll be watching the development of the OhmRGB, in particular, and it remains the full-color controller you can have right now. And we’ll watch these more experimental projects, too. It’s like a rainbow…

http://lividinstruments.com/hardware_ohmrgb.php

You’ve just created the design that, more than any other, was the signature of electronic music making in the first decade of the 21st Century. What’s your second act?

Having made the monome grid controllers the biggest design hit in music creation in the last few years, then moved to a farm in upstate New York to do some … farming (really), monome’s Brian Crabtree now and Kelli Cain have made public what’s next. Think really big knobs.

The design makes some sense to me, intuitively, already. Livid tried the obvious solution of combining encoders with arrays in its Code, but having a big cluster of encoders, while interesting, seems that it’d have limited applications. It works for Livid, but given the widespread impact of the monome, you’d expect something more generalized, more universal.

Arc could be that. They’re large, “ultra-high resolution” encoders. The monome sacrificed sensitivity for quantity with an array of on/off toggles; Arc does the reverse. The idea is presumably that you’ll really care about these big knobs. Two- and four-knob versions are promised; the four-knob variant seems like it might have the greatest appeal, depending on the price difference. The visual feedback on the side are “high-density LED rings,” but they also have “variable brightness,” meaning that they could be more visually compelling than is apparent in still photos.

In addition to being knobs, each knob is a push-button. Unlike the monome, it’s hard to see this being the only controller you’d use. It is easy to imagine it used in conjunction with another controller, though, monome or otherwise. I’m imagine that as on the monome, you’ll be able to modify the design to add tilt sensors and the like.

Like the monome before it, the arc makes no sound. It requires computer software and the OSC (OpenSoundControl) protocol in order to control software, connected through a USB port. And so like the monome, you can expect that a lot of its value will be software inspired by the quality of the design and even the high-value construction of the item. If it’s like its predecessor, the arc will be an attractive window through which clever software designers imagine new musical contraptions.

The obvious comparison here is to the humble, US$45 Griffin PowerMate, a single metal control knob that used USB. This promises to have more precise visual feedback and be a whole lot better made and open; on the other hand, anyone who was fond of the PowerMate in theory may be quicker to buy into the notion here. (flight404 aka visual legend Robert Hodgin once did a whole live visual set with an array of PowerMates; he may prove ahead of his time if this catches on.)

Pricing, details, media due later, with “orders and shipping in February.” I can say it’s real; I saw some version on Brian’s workbench.

arc [monome]

I think, having passed on a trip to Anaheim, that readers might like to get hands-on coverage of the Arc, and a serious look at whether the monome’s sequel will live up to the original. Do you agree?

Side note: People I’m talking to are already wondering what you would do with, you know, two big wheels. I refer you to Etch-a-Sketch (two wheels), your car (one big, necessarily high-resolution wheel)… I was initially skeptical of how the monome would work as an instrument with no velocity sensitivity, and was eventually won over by a combination of ingenious software and musicianship by its fanbase. I wouldn’t write off the minimalism of this just yet.

Update: stretta already has an app in the works for the arc. He mentions that in a blog post with an adorable illustration that, aside from being clever, suggests how many people will use this app. See the video after the jump – notice the PowerMate controller in the corner of the video? It’s apparently standing in for an arc. Getting the picture?

protodeck first demo from Julien Bayle on Vimeo.

Speaking of special Abletronic miracles out of reach of most mortals, meet the Protodeck. Inspired by Robert Henke’s legendary Monodeck, it’s an all-stops-pulled bundle of delicious overkill. The specs are — insane, really.

• 87 potentiometers
• 90 buttons
• 81 rgb leds
• 2×20 LCD
• 2 PIC 18F4620 (20MHz RISC processors)
• fully custom rgb led drivers
• fully custom firmware
• 2 MIDI IN/OUT interface

The ingenious design of Julien Bayle, the Protodeck isn’t available for sale. You can’t buy one, but you can build one – or treat the copious documentation on his site, from control layouts to firmware and electronic specs as inspiration for your own projects. Perhaps a full-blown Protodeck isn’t your cup of tea, but you might want a tip on how to do LED arrays, for instance — it’s in there. I would say more, but that’s time you could spend browsing through images and schematics. (Maybe it’s just the Club-Mate speaking at this point.)

http://www.julienbayle.net/diy/protodeck/

For more on the art behind this:

http://protofuse.net/

Julien promises performances and workshops, so I look forward to seeing more. (This is slightly old news for those of you tuned into such things, but for everyone else – and a reminder of the sorts of hacking you could do this summer – great hardware never goes out of style.)

You know the grid craze is in full steam once ThinkGeek offers a $50 clone. The Bliptronic 5000 is somewhere between the Tenori-On and monome. It certainly looks like the monome, with an 8-by-8 grid of light-up pads in a square form factor. But like the Tenori-On, it has built-in sounds and speaker, it’s made of aluminum, and it runs on batteries. The Bliptronic also simplifies its user interface. Its 8×8 pads are simply an eight-note octave with eight steps. There’s a play button, and knobs for tempo and tone selector. There’s also the ability to link up devices and play them together – bonus points for that, as aside from basic MIDI function, the Tenori-On as shipped by Yamaha failed to deliver some of the original collaborative features promised by designer Toshio Iwai’s original proposal.

The “old-skool” sounds are pretty lo-fi-sounding from what I can tell, but this unit does have a certain charm. If you’ve got a monome and a Tenori-On and a Launchpad in every room, you can amuse your friends by keeping one of these in the lavatory. And who knows, someone might pick this thing up and do something terrific with it. (I sure can’t argue with the price.)

Mostly what it reminds me is that it would be really fantastic to pair a synth chip directly with the monome, for a standalone monome synth, perhaps even an Arduino-programmable model (particularly since the monome already speaks serial).

Updated: Wait, hold the presses — this isn’t the work of some anonymous creator; Ty Liotta is doing the gadget design. That means this could be an eminently hackable little device, which is a good thing. Stay tuned.

Thanks to Louis Muloka and everyone else who sent this in.

The specs from ThinkGeek:

Unusual retro synthesizer is played with a grid of glowing buttons
Create looping patterns and change them dynamically while playing
Chain multiple units together and create more complex melodies
One octave range. 8 notes can be played simultaneously
8 different old-skool synth sounding instruments to choose from
Sounds created using FM waveform synthesis
Set the BPM (beats per minute) from 60 to 180 in 20 BPM increments
Built in speaker with headphone jack and line-out jack
Front panel is constructed from brushed aluminum
Includes, manual and 2 link cables for connecting additional Bliptronic units
Requires 4 x AA batteries (not included)

Bliptronic 5000 Instrument

Stay tuned here for news of the Bliptronic 10000.

Imagine an alternative universe in which simple digital handheld games evolved into sophisticated music tools. Oh, and they also made lots of really purty lights flash. Mmmmm … flashing lights.

Well, that alternative universe seems to be right here. Mike Una gave us a massive dump of unusual new DIY sequencers, crafted from the ground up to rework techno into sonic objects. Some are unquestionably indebted to the analog step sequencer, but others take as much from 80s digital toys.

Working with the Meggy, Jr. DIY handheld game platform – with a stunning 8×8 pixel resolution – Darius Kazemi has begun building a music app. He calls it “MeggySynth,” and says he’s conceptualizing it as much a video performance as it is sonic performance. Let the video get at least part of the way in, as the colors really pick up – full RGB LEDs really are a beautiful thing (and something you don’t get from projects like monome).

Our friend and Handmade Music regular, the talented hacker Collin Cunningham, covers this for MAKE:
MAKE: Blog: MeggySynth makes music

Collin rightfully compares this to Tenori-On. Part of what strikes me about Toshio Iwai’s work – not only Tenori-On for Yamaha and ElektroPlankton for Nintendo, but his installation work stretching back to the 90s – is that it often incorporates game aesthetics. Designs are reduced to their elemental interaction and visual representation, which very often includes low-resolution, pixellated grids. (Photo: Julie Delvaux.)

Now, being the greedy person I am, I really want this style of RGB grid, but with other sound sources. But I think there’s a lot of potential, and just as grids of lights can function on roadsigns, there’s no reason even a small number of pixels can’t be expressive. Just ask your local Tamigotchi.

The best part of simplicity? Darius, designing level editors — in Excel.

Tiny Subversions: My Meggy Level Editor

Ableton Live controllers are suddenly everywhere, in commercial products and DIY creations. But an in-progress prototype being designed by Serbia-based creator Sasa Djuric, found on the CDM Flickr pool, goes the extra distance to integrate more effectively with the software. The hardware looks more like the on-screen UI, for starters – an elusive objective for many controllers. And by working with the Mackie Control protocol, Sasa is able to make communication between hardware and software fully bi-directional, so the controller gives you essential feedback. There’s even a facility for scratching. The design is based on the popular MIDIbox platform.

Sasa writes with details of what the creation process is like. It’s all still very much in progress, so we’re really excited to see how it evolves into a finished design.

Sasa explains (with videos to follow):

Hi Peter.

As you noticed the controller is still in production. It is in the final stage, but there is still quite a lot to be done. Most boring part of project is finished… assembling, engraving filling, sanding and polishing the buttons. Most of wiring is also done …I hate wires. I couldn`t afford to have messy wiring so I paid special attention to do it tidy because I wanted this controller to be as compact as possible without so really no place for mess.

This controller is designed especially for Ableton Live. There are two reasons for building it myself. First, I really enjoy building my own gear, and secondly, there’s no commercial controller that really comes close enough to what I wanted to have. Beside Live, it could be used with almost the same effectiveness with other music software as it’s heavily based on the Mackie protocol and it is completely configurable. I designed it for myself but I think it is very intuitive for somebody who is using it for the first time. I put a lot of effort into ergonomics and organizing so many controls on a small surface and it was a real challenge. Only thing I wanted to have but I left out is a touchpad, but I can live without it. Most of the digital controls (rotary encoders and buttons) have multiple functions and they are accessed easily using group buttons. Some are reserved for the system, like: window navigation, undo, redo, clip controls, and some are freely assignable for "dub style" sample triggering or FX parameter control. Critical functions like volume, start, stop, record, EQ, cue and sends have dedicated controls and have no multiple functions but it can be changed easily if needed. LEDs are activated from software feedback, not internally which is important for minimizing monitor usage. An interesting feature are LED bars which are common with encoders (LED rings) but not with pots. The controller receives the fader position feedback from Live and represents it as a bar on 15 LEDs. It is designed to be used in combination with faders that have snap function, which means there will be no ugly "jump" if the physical fader doesn’t correspond to the volume position in Live.

All internal construction and buttons are made out of 3,4 and 6 mm laser cut acrylic. I used white sub-panel as I wanted to back illuminate it with white LEDs to have nice rings around the pots, but I might left that idea if space become an issue which is likely to happen. Engraving on the buttons is also done using a laser cutter. Jog wheel is 40 steps optical. Quadrature and top disks are also made out of lasered acrylic. They are mounted on a hard drive spinner motor which serves just as a very durable spinning platform. The core of this controller is Thorsten Klose`s MB64E and MB64 (www.midibox.org). I’m also planing to integrate a MIDI mixer so I it can be used without a PC but only volume controls will be supported. If by any chance I find some more room left at the end I’m planning to integrate a USB sound card. After the controller is finished it will be finally housed into lasercut steel case with aluminum side panels. Those are the plans. But I don’t expect it to changed much.

Best regards and greetings from Serbia.

It’s really brilliant-looking work already. I can’t wait to see the finished project! Best of luck to Sasa with this.

fibra’s photo stream

Omer Yosha has created a beautiful, elegant interface that uses infrared sensors to control music applications. Touch-free interfaces, of course, date back to the Theremin, but Omer is trying some new things here, creating an invisible matrix of controls in the air. And I love the way the physical object looks. He writes to tell us about the details:

I’m an Interface Design student from the FH Potsdam (near Berlin), i have a musical background, and the idea to create an AirPiano developed as i was playing around with the Arduino board, Processing and some IR sensors in my free time. It was fun controlling MIDI through moving my hands in the air, so i eventually found a way to set it all up in a way that makes sense and that is easy to control.
The concept behind the AirPiano is having a matrix in the air, with virtual keys & faders. The location of each key must be very clear for the user and easily learnt. The AirPiano is therefore only one example of an application that could adopt this concept. Since it is only the first prototype i built, it features at the moment a matrix with 3 layers, 8 keys for each layer. As long as a key is triggered, a note plays and an LED underneath the virtual key turns on (unfortunately it is hard to see it on the videos). The LEDs give the user additional feedback. The device is connected through USB and communicates with the AirPiano Software, which allows the user to assign each key/fader with a Note/Controller number, Channel and Velocity as well as transpose and save/load presets. The AirPiano Software can communicate with any MIDI instrument/sequencer. It is of course a polyphonic controller.
The AirPiano is not only fun to play, it also invites to experiment, to explore endless arrangements and develop new playing techniques. It might be useful for DJ performance, as a music therapy instrument or as a toy.
I’m at the moment trying to look for investors and people that could help me take this idea further. I presented the prototype two months ago in the Hannover Messe and received very good feedback. The concept is protected as a Provisional U.S. Patent Application.

If you can help him, chime in! I’d love to see what develops.

Here it is controlling Ableton Live:

More photos and another video to give you a sense of how this works (it’s particularly clear once you see the software interface):

Finally, here’s a video of a melodic application — not quite as convincing, I think, as the controller application (I’d rather have a Haken Continuum for actually playing, I think, and I do like tactile feedback). But it’s still really provocative as a design.

Daft Punk is on a mind-blowingly cool tour. Aside from, you know, being Daft Punk, they’ve assembled dazzling futuristic visuals, slick leather jumpsuits, and sophisticated, animated LED helmets.

What? You want to tour with LED helmets, too? It’s easy, outlined in a PDF by the creators. I can make the steps even more brief:

1. Cast your face and make a bust of the face and clay models of all the parts.
2. Modify a motorcycle helmet for the electronics.
3. Design your own LED display and controller board.
4. Glue in LEDs … one … at … a time … and connect three feet of wiring per LED.
5. Build another custom PC board for a control keypad on the armband. (Hey, step #3 was easy enough, right?)
6. Custom manufacture all the exterior plastic and finishing.
7. Paint

The best way to experience all of this is in person, naturally, but here’s a roundup of some terrific coverage.

Daft Punk Concert report and lots of technical details, via our friend Chris O’Shea / Pixelsumo (who points to all the details on the visuals and costumes)

Word of an Upcoming Daft Punk Movie, from our friend and CDM contributor Quantazelle (Liz McLean Knight)

Many, many, many Daft Punk videos on dailymotion.com

Brilliant black-and-white snaps backstage on Flickr from leather jumpsuit designer Hedi Slimane

Alien, futuristic action figures — because they can.

Gobs of videos of the pair in action:

The utter rockness of Daft Punk:

Want more style when dancing to Daft Punk? Just bend the fabric of space and time to warp your dancing moves. Or, um, video it and then do it in post, as this young woman does (via the lovely EtherBomb blog):

And the upcoming movie trailer:

No YouTube round-up of Daft Punk would be complete with out Music thing’s “visual aid” to the samples used in the songs:

See Tom’s blog entry for full discussion.

In June 2005, we first saw the Tenori-On, a futuristic music-making device covered in a grid of interactive, lit buttons, designed by the talented interactive artist Toshio Iwai as a prototype for Yamaha. Last week, Yamaha revealed some details about plans to make Iwai’s experimental device into a shipping product. (I missed this in preparations to fly off to Oahu.)

Basic specs: 16×16 grid of buttons, MIDI out, sequencing, and perhaps most surprising, built-in sampling and Motif sound capabilities with internal speakers (plus line-out, naturally). (Notably missing: any mention of network capabilities, which was arguably the most compelling part of the prototype. MIDI out would be notably limited in this respect. Perhaps these features will resurface.)

Anticipated price: £500.
Availability: Unknown, but soon — UK launch first, evidently.

Tenori-On specs [Future Music blog]
Hands-on Tenori-On video [Sonic State]
Tenori-On official site, Toshio Iwai Tenori-On blog, neither of which have been updated as I write this

Much like a car maker releasing a concept car as a factory model, it’s exciting to see this happen. Now there’s only one problem: a lot has happened since June 2005, and light-up buttons you can turn on and off aren’t exactly inaccessible technology. Here’s a quick review of what’s been developing in the world beyond Yamaha since 2005:

1. Toshio Iwai goes Nintendo. We’ve all gotten a chance to play with Iwai’s brilliant sound toys in the form of the Nintendo DS game ElectroPlankton. At the same time, musicians got the first indication that interactive art doesn’t always translate to musical instrument use. As CDM’s Nat noticed, just a few key missing features could have made ElectroPlankton truly rock (like multiplayer capabilities). Now, the Tenori-On looks terrific and I won’t judge it until it ships, but I notice some similar conservatism when it comes to next-gen functionality, like the lack of a protocol that would easily network multiple Tenori-Ons.
2. Korg goes on the grid. The KAOSS Pad KP-3 comes out sporting — what else — an interactive grid of lights. Now, unlike the Tenori-On, you can’t use these for visual effects onstage, it’s an 8×8 grid not 16×16, and they’re a touchpad rather than discrete buttons. But, powered by Korg’s experience building these sorts of devices, the KP-3 actually does more, with added effects and (as near as I can tell) more sophisticated sampling capabilities than the Tenori-On. It’s not nearly as elegant a design, with buttons and toggles hiding all these extra features, but it remains to be seen whether the Tenori-On will turn out to be musically useful or overly simplified.
3. Grids go DIY in software. Froggy Frog built his own Windows app called gControl, with touch buttons, for use with a touchpad. Result: it works however he wants, and runs on cheap touchpad hardware that can double as a computer interface. More similar experiments may follow.
4. Monome does Tenori-On, the open-source way. Most importantly of these, inspired by the Tenori-On, some enterprising hardware hackers built their own solution called the Monome. If the Monome were just a cheap clone, that’d be the end of the story. Instead, it shows how a simple idea (grid of buttons with lights) can yield very different results. (Ed. note: Vlad rightfully points out in comments that the Monome prototypes actually came before Tenori-On. Toshio Iwai, among others, likewise worked on similar ideas before. Ultimately, all of these ideas have been readily available, meaning this is even more a matter of execution — and your preference / working style. -PK) The Monome is 8×8 rather than 16×16, but it’s arguably more useful than the Tenori-On in that it’s completely hackable in hardware or software, and richly-documented by a user community. The Monome uses OpenSoundControl (OSC) for communication rather than MIDI, allowing much-easier communication with a computer. And its open-source nature has already yielded fruit in the form of community hacks. That’s just for lovers of soldering irons, right? Wrong: with roughly a year lead-time on Yamaha, the community have made the Monome better-documented and more widely-supported than the Tenori-On is ever likely to be.

Of course, I regularly advocate that music manufacturers talk about products they’re developing. In this case, you could argue that what’s happened is that the Tenori-On’s public demos inspired imitators or changed expectations. But I think something very different may be happening: open-source hardware may wind up beating the big manufacturer, not by cloning it but by doing something genuinely different.

Now it Heats Up: Which Next-Gen Hardware will Stick?

The Tenori-On already looks like a triumph of design and elegance. But Toshio Iwai didn’t invent the idea of grids of buttons with lights. As I look at the Tenori-On demo, I’m struck by all the things I would want this device to do — and then immediately wonder whether it will let me. Hardware makers just seem to believe the flexibility of computers is bad. On the contrary, a lot of us have been spoiled by it. That’s why Yamaha’s choice of MIDI over Monome’s OSC is disappointing. It’s simply going to be easier to send data between a Monome and a computer than a Tenori-On and a computer. It also makes it worth considering losing some of the nifty internal hardware capabilities on the Tenori-On, saving a little bit of money, and getting the far-greater flexibility of the Monome.

“But, wait!” you say. “The Yamaha is a pick-up-and-play device.” True. What’s wonderful about the Tenori-On is that it’s a fully-integrated hardware device. And what’s terrible about the Tenori-On is that it’s a fully-integrated hardware device. Flashy lights aside, what you get is a simple sampler / sequencer. Ultimately, this comes down to the question of how digital music will evolve — the question Iwai asked in his original design briefs for the Tenori-On. Anyone who can afford a Tenori-On probably already owns a laptop, and my question is, how easily will you be able to adapt the Tenori-On to your individual way of working? Iwai compared the Tenori-On to a violin. But violins have very steep learning curves, with lifelong payoff. Where will the Tenori-On sit on the toy vs. instrument continuum? Alternatively, which kind of tool would you want: one that immediately makes sense for a single task, or one that can be easily customized to adapt it to different tasks over time? There’s not a right answer to these questions, of course, but I don’t think the answer is as simple as “only hackers and geeks want customization.” My experience suggests that musicians of all types do.

This is all speculation, mind you, until the Tenori-On ships — apparently in the UK first. I’m very, very eager to try the Tenori-On in person. I’m always inspired by what Toshio Iwai does, whether I use it in my own music or not. And I look forward to challenging this design with these kinds of questions — and, perhaps, even reconsidering the Monome in a new light.

But how times have changed since 2005. Whether successful or not, a succession of hardware (Monome, Lemur, the continued interest in the Haken Continuum and others) have demonstrated that we’ll never again think of a two-octave keyboard with eight knobs as the final answer for digital music. They’ve also proven that far-out interfaces can turn into shipping products. And, most interestingly, the rise of open-source hardware (through the rise of x0b0x, Monome, Arduino, and Make Magazine) has made DIY gear a serious alternative to commercial hardware for specific jobs. Musicians happily use this gear alongside commercial hardware and commercial software like Ableton Live, so this isn’t just for open source nuts.

Now, it’s time to see which of these experiments sticks in the long run. Which — if any of these — whet your palette? Or are you waiting for the Next Big Thing, while happily twiddling knobs on conventional hardware? (Hey, it gets the job done. You can always hook up flashing lights separately if you have to.)