Towards a universal button grid interface

And it's open implementation

Thibaud Keller
ossia.io - Maynooth University
made with marp

An enduring practice

  • Thoroughly documented at LMU Munich by Beat Rossmy [1],
    with Alexander Wiethoff [2], Maximilian Rauh[3]
    and Sebastian Unger [4].

  • With a dedicated course at Berklee college of Music
    "Grid Controller Studies" ISEL-112 [5]

  • And an active community of artists and developers [6]
    Due, in part, to the open source, and open-ended nature of monome's grid

The monome way


As presented in Maker Stories [7].

Origins of backlit button grids

1998 - SP series (202 & 808)
Performance samplers

The grid allows:

  • Sampling and triggering
  • Copy and paste
  • Step recording
Figure 2 in Rosmy, B. & Wiethoff, A. “Musical Grid Interfaces: Past, Present, and Future Directions.” 2021[2]

Notable instruments and sequencers

  • 2007 - Tenori-on, Yamaha
  • 2014 - BeatStep, Arturia
    Circadian Rhythm, Tip Top audio (eurorack)
  • 2015 - Circuit, Novation
    Pocket operators, Teenage Engineering (hand held)
  • 2016 - Deluge, Synthstrom (open source)
  • 2017 - Seq, Polyend (wide)
  • 2019 - Zoia, Empress (nodal patcher)
  • 2023 - Push 3, Ableton (export to and from a PC)

Notable controllers

  • 2006 - 40h, monome (open source)
  • 2009 - launchpad, Novation
  • 2013 - Push, Ableton
  • 2014 - Untztrument, Adafruit (open source)
  • 2015 - Linstrument, Roger Lynn (continuous surface)
  • 2019 - Grid, Intech Studio (modular)
  • 2020 - Mine S, Special Waves (modular)

Notable libraries

Problem

  • A majority of closed source, proprietary hardware.
  • Either a blank slate (monome), or overly standardized practices
  • Software specific libraries, with divergent approaches
  • Many overlapping features

The issue with menus

The case of the
Yamaha FS1R [8]
and the dread of
"menu diving"

Tangible timelines


Samuel J. Hunt's UGS [9] & Beat Rossmy's SuperBrain

Bibliographie

[1] Rossmy, B. “Buttons, Sliders, and Keys – A Survey on Musical Grid Interface Standards.” In International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, 2022.

[2] Rossmy, B., & Wiethoff, A. “Musical Grid Interfaces: Past, Present, and Future Directions.” In International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, 2021.

[3] Rossmy, B., Rauh, M., & Wiethoff, A. “Towards User Interface Guidelines for Musical Grid Interfaces.” In International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, 2022.

[4] Rossmy, B., Unger, S., & Wiethoff, A. “TouchGrid – Combining Touch Interaction with Musical Grid Interfaces.” In International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, 2021.

[5] Matthew Davidson, aka stretta, gridalb patches repository, June 21, 2024. https://github.com/stretta/gridlab.

[6] Lines “Latest Grid Topics”. The monome comunity forum. https://llllllll.co/tag/grid.

[7] Maker Stories. “Monome / Open Source Tools for Music Makers.” https://stories.maker.co/monome-open-source-tools-for-music-makers.

[8] Robert Skerjanc, “HARDWARE-CONTROLLER FOR YAMAHA FS1R,” August 26, 2023. https://fs1r.skerjanc.de/.

[9] Hunt, Samuel J. “Exploring Polyrhythms, Polymeters, and Polytempi with the Universal Grid Sequencer Framework.” In Proceedings of the 15th International Audio Mostly Conference, 101–6. AM ’20. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2020.