Hi! Apologies in advance for the long post. I’m really excited to be getting my new grid and completing the max step sequencer lesson that @tehn created for the grid studies series. I may be jumping the gun here but I’ve tried learning max for the monome in the past and never got very far, and hoping to avoid that again. I’m thinking that a grid studies study group of like minded beginners might be fun. We can bounce questions off each other, help keep ourselves motivated, and maybe even come up with some cool new apps in the process!
I’m open to any kind of format but I initially thought we could come up ways to expand on the grid studies step sequencer so that we’re all starting from the same base. We can either all work on the same feature or each work on something different and figure out a way to combine them. It would be great if we could have some experienced mentors to support and help guide us as well.
To get the ideas going, here are some features I thought might be good projects. Keep in mind I have no idea how hard it is to implement.
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Patterns that can be selected from the bottom row somehow, or sacrifice a note row and have it on the top. Press a pattern to change to it (either immediatly from the first step, at end of previous pattern, or legato mode). LED indication of what pattern is playing. Press two patterns to loop between them, for example to create a 4 bar loop.
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Long hold on any step in a note row to go into a keyboard mode to select the note for that row. Or any other way to select the note value for a row from the monome without typing it in.
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Press two steps within the same row to create a tie between those steps to be able to have different note lengths.
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Some way to dynamically change step resolution, and some way to indicate what part of the bar you’re in. Would be great to be able to do super fast syncopated snare rolls.
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Maybe a sequencer where each row can output to a specific midi channel and there is a way to “parameter lock” a step’s velocity, pitch, and cc. So you can have a drum sequencer and a few melodic sequences all on the same page.
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Or be ambitious and try to create a metropolis/m-185 type sequencer. I imagine this would be difficult but would be so awesome! This is what I’d ultimately like to create so if there’s interest, maybe we just go for broke try to make it together?
Anyway, if anyone is interested, I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas! Even words of discouragement are welcome. I know how difficult it is to have something like this work.
