Good news for those on the hardware hunt or with a bit of cash to spend on an investment piece for the latter part of the year. The folks over at Monome have just unveiled a new product, the Aleph, and are currently taking pre-orders for a non-specific shipping date later in the year.
Before giving reasons for how much better this will make your studio and live work sound, let’s just take a second and marvel at yet another slick aesthetic from Monome. Everything they design could pretty much sit in a gallery. Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain, who met in art school and have been developing monome as a product and community since 2005. The pair use local and sustainable suppliers with their designs, and take pride in their craft, choosing carefully the materials and refusing to outsource the work.
Around this approach to a better future, the monome community has grown, in constant conversation around music, uses and the development of matching software. There’s even monome meets where everyone brings their builds to compare and use. It’s a definite upswing of making every aspect of your best known designs completely open-source, as well as the majority of the newer developed ones.
Just for kicks, take a look at extensive list of community developed and fine-tuned applications, most with user generated videos here: http://monome.org/docs/doku.php?id=app
As well as more grid interfaces preparing to be shipped and the stunning Arc2 and Arc4, Monome are releasing their first design that works as an independent “noisebox” as well as a controller. So for the first time, you can work a monome without needing a computer to plug in to. That said, once you do start connect it, it’s in the creative mapping where the Aleph really comes alive.
The announcement of the new design has been accompanied by a pretty hectic video showing the prototype in action, working alongside a violinist. It’s a good watch, check it out below, right before you get to the official details of the Aleph from Monome. Head over here for the pre-order: http://market.monome.org/
via Monome
aleph is an adaptable soundcomputer where synthesis, drum machines, samplers, loopers, and various other possibilities can be implemented with creative mapping and numerous external control methods– attach via USB (grid controllers, knob boxes, MIDI keyboards, gamepads), CV (control voltage for modular synths, foot switches, etc) and computers.
simply put, aleph is a small audio input/output device with a screen, bank of buttons, and series of encoders/knobs. it has the ability to host and run a variety of programs created by both monome and the user based community surrounding. new applications will be developed, documented and shared over time. elaborate mappings can be created without writing code by way of an easy menu driven environment and a thorough preset system.