Monome

[BJG145]

This morning there was a new arrival on the workbench (the cracked side-table beside the PC decorated with coffee rings and solder burns)...a monome!

I've been wanting to get my hands on one of these ever since SOS checked them out in 2008. This one is even earlier; it's a first-generation "40h" in kit form, which recently turned up on eBay for £35.

The boxes themselves are made of walnut treated with teak oil, while the buttons are silicone rubber set into an aluminium faceplate. The materials are sourced locally by Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain, the company's founders, with a great deal of attention to economic and ecological sustainability, and every unit is hand made; production runs are limited, and there is always a waiting list.

The ethical manufacturing policy extends to the packaging, and everything is recyclable paper and cardboard, and there's no polystyrene or bubble-wrap to be seen.

This thing looked slightly more bedraggled as I pulled it out of the used bubblewrap; a few loosely-fitting rubber squares, discoloured with age and who knows what else, and a circuit board sprouting a weed-like cluster of short green wires.



It was unexpectedly complicated to get started. The quickest way to see if it worked seemed to be to install some kind of serial/OSC driver and then load some introductory patches into Max. But when the buttons eventually lit up as I pressed them, I fell in love with it.





Monomes almost seem to have their own subculture, involving "White Whale", "Meadowphysics", and various surprisingly expensive and minimal accessories with names like "Crow" and "Ansible".

It's just the thing for a rainy afternoon.

[Martin Walker]

Wow - sometime you must make a video (or at the very least a photo set) detailing all the controllers you've made/restored/rescued.

I'd be fascinated to see more of your collection

Martin

[Drew Stephenson]

I propose a trip to Norfolk once this pandemic is over and we can all have a rummage in BJG's studio...

[BJG145]

I've been meaning to try out a professional 3D printing service for ages, and this seemed a perfect opportunity. So this morning I've been tinkering around with this monome case model in some free 3D modelling program it uses called OpenSCAD to get it to match my 40h (at least, I hope it does).

Treatstock seems to offer a simple comparison/ordering system for different services, so I chose a budget one and loaded up the .stl file with a request for grey PLA. I'll be interested to see what comes back.

(I could get into this if it works.)

[Martin Walker]

Fingers crossed for you BJG145 that the dimensions meet your requirements

Martin

[BJG145]

Thanks Martin, but 3D modelling/printing is scientific. It needs more than dumb luck.

* * * * * *

With this in mind, I just sent the contractor a note to explain that I don't know what I'm doing, and asking their advice...

[Martin Walker]

With this in mind, I just sent the contractor a note to explain that I don't know what I'm doing, and asking their advice...

Very sensible

Martin

[BJG145]

I should have been a bit quicker off the mark with this, and it's already done, with a photo uploaded on Treatstock.



Infill : 40%
Size: 7.09 x 7.09 x 0.24 in

In retrospect, I think I should have gone for a thinner solid thing that I could file if necessary, because it probably ain't going to work unless the dimensions are exact to about 0.5mm, which is a tad optimistic, and I didn't think about semi-hollow "infill". Still, you live and learn. I'm quite impressed with the service so far, and it's fun seeing my badly-specified designs come to life in solid objects. (OK, partly-solid.)

[BJG145]

Well, it was pretty close...



...but, predictably, not quite close enough.



This is entirely my fault; I'm not used to measuring things with any degree of accuracy. I see now that it's no good saying, that's about 0.5mm...yeah, let's go. Multiplied by 8 you end up several millimetres out, which is useless here.

It doesn't help that this OpenSCAD model was set up with the metric system, but the US is on imperial units with yards and inches. I was surprised when I realised that...get with the program, fellas. The original Monome blueprint works nicely in inches, not so well in milllimetres.



It's tempting to give up, buy a finished one, or a kit with sensible measurements, especially since this is definitely going to be a one-off; you never see these original 40h kits without a case nowadays. But I'll persevere. I'll give it one more shot anyway. I'm generally impressed with the quality and accuracy of this model, and the fast turnaround. I'm definitely a convert to 3D printing and Treatstock, but I'd better dig a bit deeper into the OpenSCAD script for this thing and see if I can convert it to inches instead.

[BJG145]

OK, so, I've admitted defeat.

Is it defeat? I don't know...yes and no...

I liked this thing as soon as I plugged it in, but wait, walnut and aluminium and teak oil? This one was a bit rough. I prefer things that look nice. Nevertheless, I dialled up some different parameters in OpenSCAD and was all set for 3D print V2, then I noticed it was on the wonk and hit abort.



It's not my fault. This is some dumb procedural/mathematical system. That was never my strong suit. I haven't got time to debug this bullshit.



So anyway, I saw a nice walnut and aluminium Monome 128 on Reverb. I couldn't resist.



I'm sure someone else will have lots of fun trying to figure out the dimensions for a 3D printed case for the other one! Yeah. Good luck.

[resistorman]

Nice try, though!

[Martin Walker]

Indeed, and judging by the look of that walnut and aluminium monome 128, I doubt that you're too disappointed

Martin

[Eddy Deegan]

I think the wood and aluminium looks really nice!

[Martin Walker]

Only wood and brass would look better

[BJG145]

Only wood and brass would look better

No, then I'd have to wear goggles to play it.

[BJG145]

TLDR: Thinking of using an old monome with Windows 10? Forget it.

* * * * *

I now officially hate monomes.


I resumed work on this piece of junk at around 7.30am, and the photograph was taken at 3.07pm. It took about two hours, and several pints of Moletrap, to dull the pain.

* * * * *

The walnut and aluminium monome 128 was delivered to my previous pre-Covid address. I only collected it yesterday and unboxed it last night. It looked lovely, I’d been looking forward to it…

…did I say the 40h kit was complicated? This 128 was on another level. Stuff like the console view in Max and the connection dialog in “monome_sub”, which the 40h had responded to, drew a blank. The power-up LED display looked…odd.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl7e3vCRNoI

I started to panic slightly. It was past the 7-day Reverb limit before I’d opened it, but I contacted the seller. "Hey, er, when did you last get this working?"

They’d evidently not tested before posting, but it had worked on a Mac once. Try the lllllines forum (sic)…

So I posted there and started Googling. My research (and the lack of response) quickly revealed that monome fans were probably sick to the teeth of Windows users with old versions of the hardware.

It was exactly the situation I found with the Snyderphonics Manta. I don’t get it. Boutique USB device, dev focussed on Cycling ’74 Max, plenty of Mac support, some Linux support…Windows…nada. Yeah, it worked once, let me see, I think that was ‘83…good luck…

So I spent the morning researching and messing around with whatever software and utilities I could find. Eventually…thinking I was quite brilliant, and digging out some early obsolete Windows/Monome program called “monomeserial”, I was able to get it to respond to button presses…yay! Nothing useful though. With the current software, no way. Lights off and nobody home.

Wait, you expect the LEDs to light up? Did you think this was going to be easy? Nope. Most Googled links for older versions are broken beyond even Wayback’s abilities. The newest “VariBright” versions are not only frighteningly expensive, but not nearly so cool as the obsolete walnut and aluminium ones IMHO. But the inventor seems to use a Mac and not care much about anything else. Maybe it should be rechristened the Macnome.

At the moment, I’m frustrated and baffled. I’ve realised that Windows 10 support is practically non-existent and I’m not sure if I have the energy to set up some old 32-bit Windows installation to experiment. I even spent some time installing Ubuntu on an old laptop today but that didn’t get me very far either. What is it with this Mac-only hardware? I‘ve previously come unstuck with various other controllers like the aforementioned Manta, ReMidi T8 glove, ACPad acoustic guitar controller, for the same reason.

I lied...I still want to crack this thing but it might have to go into storage until I can afford a secondhand Macbook. Meanwhile I’m equally impressed and astonished by the amount of effort that has gone into these things without visible results. I love strange and obscure electronic instruments, but so far I’m amazed that so little has been achieved by so many. I still like it, and I’d love to be proved wrong.

[Martin Walker]

I feel your pain

Martin

[BJG145]

...cheers Martin, I was grumpy today but I expect I'll forgive it once I get my hands on a Mac...

[BJG145]

I finally got it working! I'm so happy!



It's all showing up in Max and everything in Windows, and it's beautiful. Did I say I hate monomes? No, I love monomes. I'm a monomemaniac.

This afternoon I was going down more rabbit holes that I didn't even want to know about, running utilities to compare the properties of the FTDI chipsets in different versions...but what finally sorted it was simply deleting the virtual COM entry for the old one in Device Manager before letting the new one recreate it.

I'm too exhausted now to even think about music, so I'll just look at the lights.

[Martin Walker]

Bravo that man!

I always love to hear about a happy ending

Martin

[Drew Stephenson]

A labour of love!

[The Elf]

Can I ask that dumb question?...

When it's working... what does it do? (Words of one syllable)

I'm asking because it looks a lot like my Synthstrom Deluge, and I'm wondering if it's a similar device.

[BJG145]

When it's working... what does it do?

Good question. The idea is that it's a minimalistic multi-purpose OSC-based thing that can be used for whatever you like. It was one of the first of these illuminated-button-grid controllers, though there have since been numerous others, from the Ableton Push or the Polyend Seq to synths like the Deluge or Dadamachines' now sadly abandoned Composer Pro.



Despite being fiddly to use, they seem to have developed a cult following among geeks and hackers who use them to run obscure open-source sequencers with names like "Meadowphysics" to control things like modular synth setups.

Here's the obligatory implementation of Conway's Life on a 256.

https://vimeo.com/320666

(Tehn is the inventor, Brian Crabtree. Interview and examples here.)

[The Elf]

Gotcha. Thanks for taking the time to explain!

[BJG145]

...apropos of nothing...



I have the Monome set up on the desk at work at the moment. There's a few times when I've picked up some piece of music tech thinking, this will keep me occupied during dull moments at work...but this time, it's actually paid off.

It's taken me quite a while to get into the Monome vibe, but the more time I've spent with it, the more I like it. It's also a bit like having a passcard to an interesting community of experimental musicians; you don't have to have one to spend time at Lines, but it helps.

I've come to realise that development is a little fragmented. There's a module called Ansible which interfaces Monome grids to the modular world via programs with names like "Meadowphysics", "Earthsea" and "Kria". These are strange sequencer-type things. Meadowphysics is described as a "Rhizomatic cascading counter".

* * *

I was awake in the middle of the night recently and the word "Rhizome" came into my head. I thought, what is that, anyway? I had to consult the iPad, which showed me images of twisted root systems. A couple of days later, after spending time with Meadowphysics, I made the connection and remembered where I'd seen it.

* * *

...then there are translations which have been made for Max; eg there's a version of Meadowphysics for Max, but development is behind the modular version. Then there's "Norns"...

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/monome-norns

...which is based on Lua scripts, which seem to include other adaptations of systems like Meadowphysics. And there are attempts to support the Lua scripts within Max...and so it goes on. It's a mazy rabbit-hole of programming and interfaces, and along the way there are some interesting musical pattern generators.

Meadowphysics was frustrating and confusing at first; it's difficult programming a novel kind of sequencer when all you have is rows of LED buttons. But I decided to knuckle down and try and get to grips with it this morning (quiet day at the office), and found it quite rewarding.

I still shake my head in wonder at the videos showing epic amounts of gear producing erratic beeps and bleeps...

https://youtu.be/OfFyvh_BGN8?t=142

(...that's a Monome 512. They only made ten of them. One is currently being offered on Reverb for £4K, and that's without the modular...)

But I'm starting to understand the fascination, and admire the spirit with which people approach this system. When I've spent a bit more time with it I'll try and upload some beeps of my own.