When I saw the release of the first all Tenori-On album, I thought, "of course". I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking someone should do an all monome album. I pondered this over Thanksgiving. Looking at the long weekend ahead of me, I wondered if I could record a song a day using my 256. Of course, the notion of an all monome album is somewhat of a misnomer. The monome is simply an interface - a bunch of LEDs and buttons that may or may not have something to do with each other. There no built-in sound generator like there is on the Tenori-On, (I used a Doepfer modular, Prophet 5 and MachFive 2) and the software that determines the behavior of the device is entirely up to the user/artist. While this fact dilutes the idea of an all monome album, people interested in finding their own voice with an instrument consisting of a grid of buttons should note the lack of predetermined software and sounds is the true strength of the monome.
Taking this a step further, I'm using only software I created myself for the 256. In addition to the free album download, I'm also offering the Max patches I used to create the music.
This is a Creative Commons release, so you're welcome to not only download the album for free, you can sample, remix or reuse any part of it.
Grids by Matthew G Davidson is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Also, check into my flickr page for recent arty photos of the 256 I took to create the album cover. They're also Creative Commons.
Also, I'd like to say that monome, the company, had no knowledge, involvement or endorsement of this project, so I don't wish to potentially embarrass them with a hastily-thrown-together collection of monome tracks. What I've done here is representative of only one person, not the monome community as a whole.
Thank you for downloading this album. If you like what you hear, please consider using my virtual 'tip jar' or buying one of my albums from Amazon or the iTunes music store.
If you don't want to download the whole album to hear a quick sample, check this out:
11 comments:
Very, very nice.
Posted on audionewsroom too, hope it helps with the donations :-)
http://audionewsroom.blogspot.com/2007/11/first-monomethanksgiving-album.html
thanks for the post!
hi :-)
did you get my email sent days ago to your gmail account?
thanks!
No, I guess I didn't receive your email. Odd. Try again.
ok, re-sent to stretta gmail etc, hope it works this time (also because it comes from another gmail address so it should not be filtered, but who knows?!?)
:-)
so nice. i've used your apps and this is a lovely demonstration of them and the monome...
lovely...
was daedelus' recent album effectively a monome album?
oh, i guess it came out after this
Stretta -- I've downloaded five of your albums but I haven't been able to donate using your "paypal" system. Is there some other way I can honor / support your work? Is there another way I can send you some money? I'm feeling like I'm reaping a lot of benefit here with little show of gratitude. Please let me know. Peace -- Tetramorph
Gosh - that is the nicest comment I've received in a long time, thanks!
Sorry about the broken link, and thanks for letting me know about it. I believe I fixed the issue.
Very funky Matthew.
And, thanks for the related patches on your site, which I intend to soon look through (in Pd).
Meanwhile, please check out the Carnival of e-Creativity that we're doing here in India for the fourth year in a row next February. http://theaea.org/cec_cac/cec09/index.htm
As you will see, the 2009 page is (obviously?) still very barebones, but you can link through it to the earlier iterations, 2006-'07-'08, which carry listings, reports, pics, press, and even a bit of video.
'Twould be great to have you jump aboard, if possible. You can write me directly via shankarbabaa in ye olde gmail.
Keep well ~ Shankar
Post a Comment