Lemur 1.5 was announced today, bringing some significant improvements to this unique multi-touch display/control surface. Specifically, this update addresses a number of complaints about Lemur, including some I voiced in my review for Keyboard Magazine:

1. Easier mapping: MIDI and even OSC assignment was a bit of a chore in the existing Jazz Editor release, partly because it required multiple clicks to get to MIDI assignments, in particular. The new editor always has MIDI and OSC assignments visible in a tab, and there’s a new custom MIDI object for more complex, multiple-output assignments.
2. More templates, reusable components: While JazzMutant hasn’t released an exact list, the update includes more templates, which should help you get started out of the box. You can now also reuse components between templates, answering another complaint many of us had, since previously you had to duplicate work each time you built a new template.
3. 

   Knobs: The previous Lemur lacked virtual knobs. Now, knobs are available, both in endless rotary and fixed-rotation varieties.

4. Text: The surfaceLCD object lets you easily label tracks, etc., by feeding data from your computer. This basically acts as a virtual LCD screen you can add to your control layout.
5. More MIDI Control: You can now control the Lemur itself via MIDI, and use up to 8 input and output ports for some complex inter-gear configuration.

I’m still not convinced the Lemur is for everyone, but this is a major improvement on an already-innovative design. If you’re a Lemur user, I’m sure you’re in hog heaven. If not, and you don’t intend to be, there’s still a message here for manufacturers: make configuration as flexible and fluid as possible. It has an enormous effect on how a control surface is used.

Poor Monome, with just 64 buttons. Back in the 90s, Nicholas Fournel (who just sent us his MIDI tablet software) built a massive plexiglass touch-screen instrument called the Semekrys. Two of them were sensitive to a 1000×1000 grid. (Okay, not quite the same as 64 buttons, but then this is transparent and looks absurdly cool even in an age with more touchscreens.)

Proof that the search for expressive touch interfaces is still an ongoing one:

Semekrys

The Lemur multi-touch touchscreen controller is the rare kind of product that breaks entirely from convention, raising fundamental questions about how we make music. It’s comforting in a way, then, to see disagreement about just how well the finished product works. After over a year of buzz, detailed in-practice reviews of the Lemur are emerging, including my review for Keyboard Magazine, and Jonathan Segel’s review for Electronic Musician. The two reviews reach somewhat different conclusions. Neither review gives an unqualified endorsement, but both see promise in the device — just different promise. And I have to ask a question: are physical controls like knobs really as limited as people seem to assume?

I’m still partial to saving up cash for a full-featured, full-sized tablet, but in case you haven’t been watching discussion on my last story on the new Ultra-Mobile PC platform, there are some interesting musical uses for a portable tablet:

Did you opt for a laptop over a tablet when you bought your latest mobile PC? You can’t really be blamed. Tablets tend to offer less performance for the money, and hit the middle or worse overall on key audio benchmarks like processor speed, hard disk, and I/O. But you’ve also missed out: unlike a laptop, a tablet can fit comfortably on a music stand. It’s easier to tote from one part of your studio to another. It’s the perfect way of entering music notation or tweaking soft synths, with instant access to the interface.

So, great news: Microsoft, Intel, and hardware vendors have unveiled the Ultra-Mobile PC. What is it? Exactly the same tablet as before, only smaller, much slower, much less flexible, and only slightly cheaper. Uh — yay? Search on Technorati for all the buzz if you want, but I can sum it up:

It’s a smaller, slower tablet that delivers less value with more tradeoffs. And for music, it’s totally disastrous. Meanwhile, there are fantastic tablet computers that do so much more, at about the same price. Ironically, the UMPC comes just as those tablets have finally matured.

Updated: Two potential items could change my (and maybe your) mind on the new mini-tablets. One is, the price could in fact get closer to $500, which makes my comparison to bigger, more powerful tablets totally moot, and makes them much more appealing as a satellite to your main computer(s). Two, it would be interesting to run Windows Remote Desktop or VNC to remotely control a more powerful computer, or do simple sequencing and soft synths via this tablet, the USB port, and your favorite hardware controller. -PK

Imagine touching a screen to directly control Live, Reason, Reaktor, and Max/MSP while you’re playing, with a full view of the interface. That’s been possible with tablet PCs for some time, but not with a touch-centric interface. While the Mac faithful have been drooling over a vague Apple patent for touchscreen interfaces, no one seems to have noticed that Microsoft is planning to build this interface into Windows Vista. Microsoft’s Jim Allchin, head Vista honcho, told Paul Thurrott:

“We’re now supporting touch control in addition to electro-magnetic,” he told me. “We’ve done a lot of innovations here. As you know, our fingers are quite fat [compared to a stylus], so we’ve come up with new approaches for getting the focus on a selection. Also, we needed to think through how to handle left and right mouse buttons easily, and we’ve got a new approach to do that with your fingers. We think that’s very impressive.” This technology will work on any PC with a touch screen display, not just Tablet PC hardware, he said.

Check out the full interview on Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite. Now, how could you use this?

Reflections, indeed, since last week we saw a music/multimedia interface based on a camera tracking system called Frustrated Total Internal Reflection. (Sounds like an apt description of some of our undergraduate college years?)

Futuristic musical interfaces could take a radically different direction from what we’ve seen so far, and that distant future may be close — really. But let’s clear some things up:

There was a time when skeptics thought mice would never catch on. “People will never give up their QWERTY keyboards,” they said. They were half right: now we take both for granted.

Now, more experiments in multi-touch interfaces are appearing by the day. Aside from mysterious Apple patents, we have, via We Make Money Not Art, new research in multi-touch interactions from a team led by Jefferson Han. (Demos pictured.) This isn’t just any touchscreen: not only does it recognize multiple fingers as inputs, but it projects whatever imagery you want in response, enabling new, fluid interfaces, and even responds to force feedback.

With the Web abuzz about Apple’s latest patent, filing, it’s worth reading the actual patent, 0060026536. Like all patent filings, this research may never translate to a shipping product. But it does make for good reading, and it clears up some issues — the most important one being this is about gestures, not specific hardware. Oh, and yes, Apple is working on a touchscreen music mixer:

The Lemur multitouch control surface is as much about software as it is about hardware, and the folks at JazzMutant and Cycling ‘74 have been hard at work updating that software and making it work effectively with more applications. Think better MIDI support, Ableton Live control, and new tutorials on exploring sound and sequencing. Thanks to updates to the JazzMutant site and a 1.2 firmware update for the hardware, the Lemur now boasts:

MIDI compatibility: It’s now easier to scale and generate MIDI data from the more complex OpenSoundControl data piped out of the Lemur.

New object physics: The Lemur’s quasi-magical use of bouncing on-screen objects, programmable with attraction, oscillation, and other features, have been revised in the 1.2 firmware, with more updates on the way.

More templates: The redesigned Jazz Mutant website now has a workshop section with tutorials. Some probably won’t surprise you (exploring granular synthesis in Max/MSP), but others might (using Lemur as a Star Trek-style step sequencer, or to control Cubase SX and Ableton Live 5).

By the way, if you’re in Santa Monica, California this Saturday, Cycling ‘74 will have a workshop at the Apple Store. Say hi for us, and let us know how it goes.

Related:

Detailed Lemur feature rundown [JazzMutant]
Cycling ‘74 Shows Lemur Touschscreen