In this set of videos, synthesist & programmer Matthew Davidson (stretta) demonstrates his Gridlab Strum for monome.
The first video, above, is a demonstration of Gridlab Strum in action. The next video, below, is an in-depth look at how it works:
Gridlab is a suite of Max For Live monome devices, developed for Berklee ISEL-P112 Grid Performance Studies. It’s available as a free download via Github.
Wonderful. A new midi expressivity. I want it!
Wow, this is fascinating!
i like the idea but as a guitarist I am not a fan of the knobs, i would rather have a touch strip (maybe along the side so that you can pluck individual strings) for the strum – also rather than having flats and sharps and flats displayed i would rather have it tuned like a guitar with fret markers so that you could do standard chord structures instead of repositioning them
so essentially you want… a guitar?
no more like an evolution of the omnichord – the problem with what he did with the knobs is that it takes an organic expression which is the act of strumming and attaches it to an inorganic expression which is turning a knob – you can give a guitar to a baby and they know what strumming does it is a natural motion to create sound.
I’m a guitarist, finger style and pick. I have played a lot of flamenco which the above sounds video allures to. It’s actually not that strange using the ARCs rotary to strum. It actually feels natural. You’re have a lot of haptic control because the knob is mechanical and in the case of the ARC, beautifully engineered. The touch strip has no mechanical resistance, except for plastic slide resistance and got rid id of both of mine.
Everybody to their own I suppose.
I was asked by a colleague why I would want this as he knows I play the instrument and I replied that it is so wrong, that it is just right. Map it to piano, harp etc.
Great work
Stuff like this is interesting, but I’d like to see someone actually use it musically. It seems very difficult to play.
Did you watch the first video? How could you not consider that a “musical use”? I thought he made it look effortless…
You can strum a Kordbot. https://www.islainstruments.com/
256 with arc?
I think Spock had one of these in the 60’s