MGCVM - Monome Grid Control and Visualisation Modules

Hi everybody,

I would like to share something I’ve been working on the past few weeks: MGCVM.

MGCVM is a collection of modules for making custom performance interfaces for monome grids in Max. It takes advantage of monome’s decoupled design to link performance actions to a variety of visual animations. Apart from securing a static one-on-one relationship between key presses and LED feedback or a visual representation of the applied musical process, MGCVM allows for coupling these animations to the sounds produced by the performer’s actions.

MGCVM is still in an early stage of development so I won’t be sharing it for now (still too many loose ends and limited to 256 VB only at the moment). I plan on increasing the number of visualisations, which for now are composed for my own performance practice. If you have any suggestions … shoot! Light conditions weren’t optimal when shooting the video below so some animations might not be too clear.

Best,

ithkaa

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Incredible work! Hopefully you can share it soon. If/when you do share it, this would be a great package for the Max Package Manager.

The music in the video is excellent.

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That’s very cool.
I have an idea but no clue how possible it would be. That is to have a “create your own visualisation” module. It would allow the user to input (via the grid) what visualisation they wanted to occur and also define which action would trigger the visualisation. Sort of like a step entry sequencer in music terms but for a visualisation.

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Amazing project and concept ! Can’t wait to try it.

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This is fantastic! Love the idea of a high-level set of modules that allow people to create their own performance / composition systems with decoupled visualization outside of understanding code. Also it seems like a great toolbox for quickly sketching grid interfaces for those (like myself) who spend most of their time on the control / dsp & need an interim interaction solution.

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this is huge ! great work :slight_smile:

Cool! Beap/Vizzie for monome grids!

Thanks everybody!

@sandy like the idea!

@Galapagoose perhaps Control could work for mapping interim interactions …

@alancodger to me it makes more sense on a bigger grid but I’m planning to make it work for the whole family

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wooow this looks amazing! every time i think all the possibilities of the grid are already explored there comes someone to disprove this :slight_smile:

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Hey @ithkaa! This is so wonderful! Any news on releasing it? Much respect for your amazing work!

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@ithkaa wow!! how did i miss this? excellent execution and introduction video-- with matching good music.

perhaps you might be interested in crowd-sourcing some help here to finish up any of the technical/doc work?

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Tx guys! Been working on some other projects the past few months so didn’t develop this any further. I’ll wrap up whatever I have, document it and put it up on Github somewhere next week.

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Ohhhh that would be super nice!!! Meanwhile I#ll be checking out ‘Elements’. Thank you so much!

For the very curious ones. @ithkaa pointed me to his very interesting thesis, where you can find an early version of MGCVM: http://www.benjaminvanesser.be/invisible/communication.html#

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MGVCM is now up on github! Installation instructions etc are in the README file. I only described macOS installation as I don’t have a Windows machine. Perhaps somebody can point Windows users in the right direction …

Some notes:

  • MGCVM is optimized for 256 variable brightness grids. Some modules will work fine on smaller variable brightness grids, some won’t work at all. Non-variable brightness grids are out of the picture. As tehn already mentioned, perhaps there are some avid monome/max users among you that would like to help develop this toolbox further (f.i. adding nonvaribright support). Let me know if you do.

  • MGCVM is still in an early stage of development so there will be bugs. I am also well aware that many things can be patched more adequately so if you spot something out of the ordinary, let me know. Please keep in mind that I won’t be able to grant every request or fix every bug right away.

Best,
ithkaa

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Thank you so much @ithkaa! Great work!

Thank you!! This is amazing!

Were there additional runs of the 2012 256 beyond the initial 50? How many varibright 256 grids are out there? Sorry for the tangent, but I’m eager to try this. I guess I’ll find out which parts work with a 128. Thanks for sharing!

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@kza & @kali_yuga tx guys!

@jasonw22 I know there aren’t that many 256 varibrights out there. I initially created this for my own instrument and performance practice but thought it could be interesting to other monomers, so I’m sharing it. Making it available for nonvaribrights is on my list, then smaller grids. For now, most ‘control’ modules will work on smaller grids (the dynamic faders won’t). Some visualisation modules will work too: glitch, hfreeze, vfreeze, loop, pulsegrid, snake, stutter and VU meter … perhaps not optimal but they’ll work.

Best,

ithkaa

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Thanks! It’s helpful to know where to start.

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