#41

I’m having a bit of a hard time with the brief turn that this thread took. With no intention of being rude, you are opting in as a user. If you do not like it, or are frustrated by it, don’t opt in. There is absolutely no obligation to purchase crow, teletype, norns, etc. I love the sound of the cello. I will not be opting in, however, because I would be tremendously frustrated by my ability to make music with it. No hard feelings though! Plenty of others are using the cello to great effect!

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#42

I appreciate this sentiment but I don’t see this as an either/or binary.

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#44

I hope my comments have been constructive.

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#46

I will say that my experience thus far in the Monome universe has been both incredibly frustrating and rewarding. Frustrating in the way that learning a new language is frustrating, because it’s hard and doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not a new pedal that I jam into my rig and understand in 10 minutes. I remember launching MLR for the first time and being completely stupefied because I wanted to do the thing that @tehn does in the video but, like, where’s the button that does that? But the fruit of embracing this frustration has been musical growth. Much like a new language, putting in the work of wrapping my brain around norns/grid/lua has opened me up to entirely new avenues of expression, and I can’t say that for any other tool in recent memory. It is becoming an extension of who I want to be as a musician. That is cool.

So, yeah, a lot of this stuff has required digging through the forum and banging my head against the wall and sending people messages. And lots of practice/repetition. It required work, but that is how you stop being a layman. And I do not think that this is an elitist or unrealistic position to take. Some of it’s cryptic and needs to be thought about. Lots of cool stuff is like that. The result for me (so far) has been music that is better than it would have otherwise been.

It’s less to me about “opting in” or “opting out” and more like a lot of other things in life- do whatever you want, but you’ll get more out if you put more in.

15 Likes
#47

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this at least once, but I worked as a non-coding software product manager from 1998 until 2013, so we’re in the same clan.

I see how you could infer this, but that was not my intention. I’m not suggesting that the nice people who make these wonderful products should adopt a strategy to capture and expand the “post-chasm” marketplace, I’m just saying that different segments have different needs when it comes to interacting with technology.

I agree with you that this new offering is “perfectly in line with past products”, and that’s good! What I also sense is that there is a substantial effort on the part of the entire monome team to make their documentation more accessible and organized, which is also good.

What I hoped to communicate was that technical products positioned for use by non-technical people require a different level of hand-holding than the same products positioned to technical people. The best example of this is the reliance on GitHub - non-technical people see that as an impenetrable fog, which is a perspective that causes a bit of cognitive dissonance with technical people, to whom GitHub makes perfect sense.

I’m not trying to set up an “us vs them” strawman by any means. I’m just encouraging the community to understand that it is now made up of individuals with somewhat divergent perspectives when it comes to technology and the desire to do technical things in the pursuit of musical outcomes. These communities can learn a lot from each other, and that’s part of the magic of this community: it is a wonderful example of 1+1 > 2 thinking, and I feel privileged to have the opportunity to participate in it.

6 Likes
#48

just popping in to thank folks for their feedback re: the main product page. i went through and cleaned things up yesterday, hopefully this reads a bit better to a wider range of perspectives?

https://monome.org/docs/crow/

please keep good ideas coming! these docs are always just a starting point for community discussion, which then informs changes, which then inform community discussion, which then etc etc

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Here: crow
#49

Little thing about this line:
‘connect crow to your computer through USB and fire up Druid in a browser to live code’

Druid runs on the command line, right? I’m assuming it’s not a web-based editor like Maiden so perhaps it would be best to avoid doubt or confusion and not mention ‘browser’?

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#50

woop! good catch, apologies! will update today.

edit: changes pushed, waiting for site to update. also, thank you @ceedotgeedot for additional dm’d suggestions!

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#51

mod note: gah, sorry for the out-of-order mess here with the preceding 3 messages

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#52

I see this from so many various angles… at the end of the day, I can ask someone to explain how to swim, I can read books and study and watch youtube and all that, but at some point I have to get in the water.

I would just like to start in the kiddie pool, maybe with a lifeguard. I don’t need floaties, though. But don’t throw me off the dock and expect me to get it.

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#53

Monome does great floaties and kickboards.

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#54

GitHub is a perfect example of my need for some gentle introductory help.

I assume that the GiHub site has some helpful information but it would be most excellent to have something here that provides some tips for getting a start on navigating GitHub.

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#55

Can you recall what was confusing about github or what you were trying to do? If you’re not coding, usually you can go to a ‘repo’ or repository (which is pretty much a folder) and download that folder.

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#56

It’s as simple as arriving at a site and not finding it particularly intuitive to understand.

Pretty basic stuff that may sound stupid but nonetheless a bit confusing.

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#57

Again, a little more substance on what you’re trying to achieve would help in terms of providing or pointing you at better docs. So for example, which of the following are of interest?

  1. Getting the latest version of a particular script
  2. Keeping track of your own revisions to that script
  3. Contributing your changes back to the original author

There are a ton of tutorials for git out there, of various levels of quality/user-friendliness. Without knowing what you’re trying to do, it’s harder to point you in the right direction.

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#58

Understood. And thanks for engaging with this.

My issue is basically that I’m not even sure what I want to do yet! So what would be helpful to me is a “for dummies” primmer kind of introduction, enough to give an indication of what is even possible…

Sorry if that’s ultra lame…

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#59

Not lame at all!

Have you seen this thread? It’s where I got my start with github/git :slight_smile:

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#60

Maybe a couple good general github tutorial links would be helpful. I think I’m navigating it okay, but there are a lot of words like ‘blob’ and ‘commit’ that can be confusing.

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#61

Hmm, I wonder if simply sitting down and recording a screencast where I walk through making some changes to a script would be helpful??

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#62

Very interested here! Thanks so much!

1 Like