I like to consider myself a bedroom musician. I try to write music, but usually end up sitting on the floor for hours twisting nobs, pushing sliders, and hitting buttons in an effort to make entirely unintended sounds through my instruments. I really enjoy finding weird musical toys.
A while ago I stumbled on to the Monome. The Monome is exactly that - a weird musical toy. It’s an open sourced controller. By controller, I mean it has buttons. When you push a button it does something. That something is defined by the user. Still with me?
For our purposes today, the controller is tied to music software - production suites, samplers, etc. It can do many other things. Limitless things, in fact. That’s a whole ‘nother subject that I’ve spend entirely too much time thinking about.
In any event - the Monome allows for a new kind of live music production. You can define an area of the board for samples, an area for effects, and an area to control the “live timeline” (sorry - not sure on actual terms) so that you can jump immediately back and forth, with different tempos, directions, and all sorts of other weird/interesting variations of what was just recorded in real time.
Pretty Lights, a.k.a. Derek Vincent Smith and Cory Eberhard, have employed the Monome in a very interesting way. Derek, the live production side of the dynamic duo, has taken his ecletic background and tied together jazz, hip hop, funk, R&B, and a host other genres into tight little package that tends to turn into a sweatbox of a dance party. All of his unique beats are entirely facilitated through this crazy little box of buttons. Gotta love it.
Today’s pick is really just a clip of how he uses the Monome. It’s not entirely off the wall, but is pretty inspiring to see how all of the sounds come from the push of a button. If you like the vibe make sure to check out his site. Both of his albums are free of charge.
http://www.prettylightsmusic.com/
- MJ
MLR finally moving from derekvincentsmith on Vimeo.
