Day 102 / Why Monome = Magic

This evening I decided to finally put some effort into my song for the latest Monome Community Remix Project.  The deadline is fast approaching and I haven’t put enough focus towards it.  This one is the seventh of the remix projects and the theme of this one is toys.  Everyone uploaded a sample of a toy making noises and we all have to make music out of it.  Well, tonight I was reminded once again of why the monome and it’s applications combine to create some kind of super-force in music creation.  All I knew going into this one tonight was that I wanted to use a monome app that I hadn’t used in a long time called Tintinnabulome.  Not only is it the hardest monome app to pronounce it’s also a tough one to describe.  It’s, in its most basic form, an arpeggiator.  It’s described on the monome site as “a modal arpeggiator fitted to the decoupled grid of the monome”.  All I know is that it makes beautiful music.

 
Oh yes, and the monome you see in the pictures above is my first monome which I made from the kit. The all wood faceplate was a bitch to create.

 

Click here to see a video of the application in action.

 
 

This post should also be partly about praising a man named Mathew Davidson, known on the net as Stretta.  He is the guy that developed Tintinnabulome as well as a grip of other powerful monome applications.  He is like a wizard or something.  Everything he produces has a very high quality of design to it.  His music as well is inspired and some of the best analog synth stuff I’ve found on the net.  Check out his blog if you have the time, it’s extremely insightful in a variety of ways.

 
 

Finally, I thought I’d demonstrate why the monome = magic by taking you through my process with a group of sound files.

 

1.  To begin with click and play the first track in the music player below to hear the original sample that I used.  A funny sounding toy.

 

2.  Click and play the second track to hear the snippet that I ultimately edited out of the original sample to use.  Just a blip, basically.

 

3.  Then I took that little blip and placed it into an Ableton sampler so that it could be pitch shifted with a keyboard.  I duplicated that sampler and created four instances of it.  Then I turned on the monome and plugged Tintinnabulome into those samplers.  Within a matter of two hours I had the little tune you can hear on track three!  I found myself getting lost in all of the musical possibilities.  All of the sounds you hear in the song except for the drums come from that little blip in track 2.  Awesome.

 

Thank you, Stretta.  Thank you, monome.

 
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