Friday, 14 March 2008
MMS - Drum Machine
I've been working on the Monome Music System for a week and a half now, but it didn't make a sound until tonight. The interface lends itself rather obviously to drum programming, which is as good a place to start as any. This is just a demo, so the drum pattern isn't the best ever (especially since I only had one free hand as usual.)
UPDATE: Now up on (and thanks very much to) MatrixSynth.
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4 comments:
This is incredibly cool!
Exactly the kind of interface I envisioned for making/modifying drum loops for a live acid set... well done.
It looks cool, but it still looks incredibly alien and not very user friendly to me. I wonder if you left the device for a month or so then came back to it and forgot which buttons did what? How do you remember what each button does?
hi amos, thanks. i just put a load more features into it that rearrange the pattern in various ways while its playing, and also change the way it's played back, so that you can get lots of material out of only one loop, which is great for minimalists like me as i rarely have more than 4 (2 bar) drum patterns in any one track.
hi probe, it's surprising how quickly you get used to using the interface. it's true that there is some learning involved, but it only takes an hour or two to get totally familiar. did you ever learn the guitar? i haven't owned one for over 10 years yet i can still pick out a few chords (and the frets certainly aren't labeled with anything) but in any case there are some hints that get displayed: during the switching of screens, the name of the next page is shown, and at about the 2 minute mark in the video, the hint "era" is shown when i press the erase key.
True, I suppose it could be like learning to play a musical instrument. I suppose you have to reserve a certain amount of judgement until you have a go on one. From the video, the drum loop patterns look pretty self-explanatory. But not knowing what the other buttons do and it looks alien to the onlooker. If it pushes things forward in making music then that can only be a good thing. :)
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