...at least if you're Tehn. Here he is performing live on an early prototype of the monome:
I've become obsessed with this controller (dare I say instrument?) recently, and I think this video is a perfect example of why. Even though I've known about it for more than a year and a half, the brilliance didn't really hit me until I started thinking hard about live performance. It obviously won't work for everything, but the simplicity and power of this simple button grid is truly astounding. Now if only you could still buy one =). I'm waiting for the kit to become available again, at which point I'm planning on building my own. Stay tuned.
9 comments:
yeah see that makes more sense to me now... but what is the advantage over say a computer keyboard? (i guess i am missing the point of the lights)
Well, first of all the lights aren't hardwired to the buttons- they can be programmed to do anything you'd like. In this particular control setup (the "mlr" max patch) the lights represent position in an audio file per row- you can see that when buttons aren't being pushed, they tend to "scroll" across the field. By pushing buttons in this patch, you're causing each audio file to jump to the location in the audio file represented by that button. In the case of mlr, this is better than a keyboard because you can constantly see where each file is in playback by the position of the light on it's row. If you do a youtube search for 'monome' you'll see a bunch of other patches in use that utilize the lights and buttons in totally different ways.
Ebay Item 300221868756
I can't believe how much they charge for their kits... the parts cost less than $100 for everything and the circuit boards can be etched for cheap. I guess it's a monopoly thing but still, WHOOOOO doggy that's WAY inflated pricing. Like 8-10x markup.
You could source all those parts minus the boards for way less and see if you can buy just the boards from them. You'd save a boatload of dough. They put the schematics and layouts up for public download and that's all you really need! The controller IC is standard I'm sure and you can order all the parts from Mouser or DigiKey.
You can also download images of the PCBs, create a trace of them in illustrator and etch your own easily.
Oops! The kits are pretty cheap - it's the assembled that are so pricey. I guess labor is going up!
Cool idea and a sweet controller!
I had the same thought when I first looked into these (that they're overly expensive), but when I started looking in to sourcing parts, I realized that they're really not that far off.
Kit-wise, the actual components can be had fairly cheaply, but prices for one-off PCBs are fairly high, and it's hard to even get a place to make a batch smaller than three. The keypads are also custom- sparkfun.com has some knock off's, but even those will run you $80 for an 8x8 grid and backplane w/o LEDs or a faceplate.
As far as the final product, $450 for an 8x8 monome seems high, but I've been looking into the cost of the aluminum faceplate alone (not counting the walnut enclosure), and it looks like the best I'm going to do is about $75 through a group buy off a run of 20 plates.
I guess in the end this is really a coture controller. I'm going to try to build it as cheaply as I can, but it's certainly been a lesson in economies of scale.
Since I've gotten into building my own tube guitar amplifiers (working on #3 now!) I've found a lot of cool custom fabricators. The faceplate can be laser cut from a blank aluminum plate using an Illustrator file for the cost of the aluminum by BNP lasers (great company). Should be doable for <$40. The wood enclosure you could build a rudimentary one for cheap or use something as simple as a generic Hammond box for around $20 with some nylon standoffs. The button pad is pricey but the PCB thing you can etch yourself for just the cost of materials. At the end of the day though, the $250 for the kit is worth it.
Yamaha ripped it off too: http://www.htfr.com/more-info/MR243961
Under $40 for an aluminum faceplate?! Tell me more! Maybe we should take this conversation "offline" (i.e. to email)?
BTW, the kits don't include a faceplate or an enclosure, so they're expensive, but not as expensive as one might think. I'm not sure I could hand-etch that PCB, for example.
email coming your way, broseph.
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