Here’s a live performance by Matthew Davidson (Stretta) that uses the monome to explore FM synthesis.

Here’s what Davidson has to say about the performance:

Feeling pretty good about releasing a 512 version of press cafe the day before, I decided to tackle an idea I had for the monome involving FM synthesis. The horizontal axis is pitch and a modal pitch map can be quickly generated on any base note, or you can edit the pitch map arbitrarily. The vertical axis is a modulation parameter that can be routed simultaneously to several destinations. Patch editing is very gratifying as everything is live all the time, so you don’t have to re-trigger notes to hear the effect. This also opens the door to additional real time control. It is easily hackable. There are no polyphony/voice limitations. The downside is it isn’t light on the processor. This patch consumes 20% of one core on my core i7. I’m using some hacked in support for the powermate knob to quickly make some parameter changes to broaden the range of timbres demonstrated.

I finished the patch on Saturday night and resolved to make a video on Sunday. I had in mind something more musical for a demonstration, but I was losing sunlight, so this will have to do for now. I added reverb after the fact (Valhalla Shimmer), otherwise, you’re hearing the real-time output.

20 years ago, I wished for the ability to design a purpose-built synthesizer/instrument in a specific configuration, and use an adaptable, non-specific interface to control that synthesizer. Today this is possible. I wish I could spend every day making things like this.

by stretta