How did you get here?

[eblomquist]

My memory is hazy at this point. It may have been a mention on a Facebook eurorack group, or it may have been something I saw somewhere else during random eurorack google searching, but for sure one of the prime motivators was a delightful visit with Jacob @ellips_s, who was still a Berklee electronic music major in 2017 or 18.

My fellow faculty member Stretta introduced us, and Jacob kindly brought his isms to my office and proceeded to blow my mind with what he was doing with it.

That set my intention to explore this magical universe, and before long I was hanging out here and making some new friends. The inspiration hasn’t stopped, the learning curves are still challenging, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Well, I would love to get a Norns, but that’s just a matter of time…

Thanks Jacob, I’m still grateful, you actually changed my life that day

[n-So]

came for the tech support for Monome products, stayed for the incredible community.

[LazyCircuits]

This.

I was googling to find out about a grid that I saw for sale and found a nice community.

[muied_lumens]

I’m fairly new. This place was described (on a different and often argumentative forum) as being pretentious or something like that, so I immediately knew it was the place for me.

I immediately felt at home here, despite putting my foot in it once or twice.

But seriously, many of the threads here contain post after post of pure gold. I really think it’s something special. Long may it last! Thank you all, especially the mods.

[marcus_fischer]

I first heard about monome from a 2006 article on create digital music and started following brian + kelli’s progreess. I remeber seeing them post images of pouring silicon into molds for the 40h enclosures and baking circuit boards in toaster ovens… all of it was so incredible to me. As the details of the development of the first walnut series started to emerge, I was OBSESSED. I joined the monome forum and kept a close eye on things. I remember as the order date for the first batch of 128’s got closer I so heartbroken because I was totally strapped for cash at that time and then after seeing that they sold out in something like 5 minutes all hopes were dashed. That christmas I opened a tiny box from my wife and in it was a little photo of a 128 glued to a piece of cardboard. It turns out on release day she was at work camped out waiting to pull the trigger. I think my 128 is #096 / 100. I was so shocked. When the 128 finally arrived I was so amazed at the craftsmanship of this beautiful little box. Later I wound up building a 40h kit and then got a walnut 64 from a later batch. I loved all the incredible generosity of the community on those forums. like all the amazing things that @stretta and @stevieraysean created and shared.
I found such a wonderful community on the monome forums and made some genuine friends. As @billvanloo mentioned, I was doing a lot of monome based things in 2009 - including making some felt covers for the 128 and the 64. People started asking me to make them for their grids so I eventually started taking orders and made more than 60 of those felt covers until my local source for that 1/4" thick felt dried up.
As I transitioned away from making music on the computer I was so sad that my lovely monomes were getting less use (and with it, the monome forum) but with the introduction of the modular modules and the new lines forum, there was a new spark for me.
I’m so fortunate to have been able to spend in-person time with people that I first got to know on the monome forums and then on lines. At it’s core, I feel like kindness and generosity are the heart of lines and I appreciate it so much.
Especially now.

[steveoath]

Just wanted to add. This has been the first (only?) online community that I have been part of that actually feels like a community. The discussion is great, sharing and refining of ideas is brilliant. The opportunity to be part of LCRP and @disquiet junto projects have always been exceptionally rewarding for me personally.

[nonsmeddy]

A few years ago I saw a comment on a BoingBoing article, I’m about 70% sure it was either @cmcavoy or @joemcmahon – something-mc-something! – about the Disquiet Junto. The comment, that is. I don’t remember what the article was about but I don’t think it was the Junto.

[wheelersounds]

I’d heard a lot about Monome but the hardware was inaccessible to me until 2017 when a friend very generously gifted me a grid he wasn’t using. I came to Lines to try to identify the version (it’s a greyscale 64) and stuck around because of all the common ground and civility and interesting/compelling things people post about. I didn’t realize until I got an achievement or whatever for visiting every day for a year, that I had become very invested here. I learn so much from the people in this community.
@mangrove fellow Mills grad here, MFA class of 2017 in electronic music

[edison]

man i always wanted one of those felt covers!!! but by the time i got a real grid, they were long gone…

[tekknovator]

Open source and Supercollider brought me here. Norns is heaven for me.
Love this forum, very nice place.

[marcus_fischer]

your yellow plastic box grid probably got more use than 90% of the 64’s on the street. respect.

[nattog]

Came here on a fortuitous search for book recommendations, then had it bookmarked for a while before visiting regularly. Gone down many adventures stemming from the discussions here

[Zeke_B]

Since this topic is in meta, I will get meta.

My journey to lines began in my youth. For some bizarre reason (bizarre because it ended up being so out of character for them), my parents gave me a small Casio synthesizer keyboard with a built-in speaker when I was in kindergarten or first grade. Neither of them played piano, so I have no idea how they came by it, but one day it was in my house and then they let me have it. (I don’t remember the model, but it was cream colored and probably only two or two and a half octaves.) I figured out do-re-mi, but what I enjoyed immensely was playing three notes in order (a one-shot arpeggio, if you will) on what i guess was the string setting. The way the chords that I played felt and the way they sounded fascinated me. Externally and around the same time, Top Gun was in theaters and that synth line in “Take My Breath Away” that I heard a few times on the radio gave me goosebumps. It began.

In my teens, I enjoyed Enya’s Watermark and Shepherd Moon albums and also fell in love with the movie Dune and it’s soundtrack. I was more interested in playing guitar than keys, but eventually got a used Yamaha RM1x in my 20’s to try to make “cool electronic music” with… nothing of the sort happened, though I did play keyboards in an indie band in the early 00’s…

I followed all kinds of electronic music and loved progressive house and trance because of how melodic stuff on Hooj Toons and Perfecto was, and was also getting into Aphex Twin. Monumental for me was hearing Bath’s “Cerulean” (particularly that first track) and Flying Lotus’ remix of Gucci Mane’s “Photo Shoot” on an Adult Swim comp–I hadn’t heard music like that before and I loved it. I tried forming a noise band with a friend, but we didn’t have the right equipment to make a noise we liked. I found ZZK and a love for cumbia thanks to a new twist put on it. At that point I was much more interested in electronic music–both as a listener and aspiring creator.

I spent a long time raising my kids without much disposable income, and then in the last couple of years I got back into making music again. I finally bought a Moog (a Subphatty) and Ableton Live and started attempting to make music, but my life was little too hectic to properly focus on the process. What this did introduce to me was the components of synthesis, and all of the cool stuff I could figure out on Live, particularly with samples.

I can’t retrace my steps from that era of my life cleanly because I was careening between YouTube videos, interviews I could find that discussed gear, and Instagram accounts for the last couple of years and heard about Eurorack. I told myself no way. Then one day last September, I watched this video @mattlowery posted to Instagram and got floored all over again. He tagged the lines Instagram account I think, which was mostly bare. I found the monome website, which I believe pointed to the forums, which seemed intimidating (not the vibes, just the sheer number of topics filled with discussion by knowledgeable people), so I didn’t join when I first found it. Then after a week on an FB group, I decided I wasn’t really feeling that and came back. I signed up and it has been a game changer for me. It definitely touches on all of the things that interest and inspire me musically.

As this post is already getting suuuuuuper long, I will stop here and offer a sincere thank you to everyone here who posts–you all have created a wonderful community that I enjoy being a part of.

[Fedor]

I just can’t backtrack how I got here, no memories of it at all. Maybe I was always here?)

[reallyok]

i had been slowly getting into electronic music over the years… i can trace it all the way back to hearing soul coughing, which was perfect for me as a drummer. electronic music ideas hidden in a band, it got my ears ready for the usual staples - aphex twin, squarepusher, four tet.

later on, my love of hip-hop introduced me to monome. i was a big fan of busdriver, and some time around 2010 i noticed that he was working with someone named daedelus and for some reason they stuck in my mind - maybe someone had mentioned “oh it’s so cool driver is working with daedelus,” something like that. years after that i finally saw some performance videos of theirs - "oh yeah! i know that artist, they work with busdriver. wait. what is going on here.

found out about monome, found out about the forum. at first i was super interested but kind of balked at actually getting into the gear myself - seemed expensive “for a drummer,” etc - all that stuff i’m sure any traditional instrumentalist thinks before fully diving into electronic land. gave in around 2014 and bought a grid, got super into max… still here and still loving the gear. it’s a fantastic community, and approach to art making in general.

was excited to find out that monome had calarts ties as i ended up going there myself. moved here with two grids and aleph, now have two grids norns teletype crow… and monome lead me to mannequins as well! this forum has also introduced me to ciat-lonbarde, i’ve learned how to solder circuits since joining… it’s really a wonderful place that has lead to lots of good things.

what a cool thread! really enjoying reading everyone else’s paths.

[mattlowery]

If I remember correctly, I stumbled across a photo of @marcus_fischer 's installation at the Variform gallery (the one with all the little seed pods being excited by speaker cones…amazing), and while checking out his profile stumbled upon norns. One click led to another and I landed on @tehn 's metallophone/norns demo. I was totally mesmerized. At that point, I was into guitar pedals in a big way and was thirsty for something different but probably couldn’t quite have described what.

I saw that video and was like “that. whatever that is” and didn’t realize that I was talking about both norns and lines. And here we are.

Much richer in friendships and inspiration; much poorer due to modular

[marcus_fischer]

Yes! “Multiples”

That is one of my favorite installations. Glad it lead you here.

[fourhoarder]

I didn’t know that was you! really awesome work.

[sademik]

i just wanted to chime in and say that reading this thread makes me really happy.

[ders]

Hi everyone! First time posting here, although I’ve been lurkin around since this forum’s inception (lurked a bit on the old monome forums as well )

I became instantly fascinated with the grid after reading about it online (CDM perhaps?) and finally bought a walnut 64 in 2013. Before then I had mostly played in punk bands, but loved chopping up audio on my laptop and did a fair amount of multimedia work with Pd during my undergrad years at UIUC. I was always looking for ways to make my computer an instrument, more than just a fickle host for the Adobe Creative Suite.

I briefly met Brian in 2013 after somehow convincing the owners of the graphic design studio I worked at right out of college to invite him to speak/perform at their annual TED-like design conference. That job came and went, but the grid has stuck around ever since — I used MLRV extensively along with contact mics, floor triggers and video gear in a series of site-specific modern dance performances, and a string of shows and recordings with my good friend’s jazz combo

I’ve worked on a handful of never-published Pd grid interfaces over the years, and recently rekindled my love of laptops thanks to Madrona Labs’ Kaivo and the Mark Eats sequencer — looking to dive into the norns world soon.

I really love this forum, and have learned a ton about audio programming and synthesis concepts just from scrolling around. Thank you all for being better at sharing!