theme	_class	<!-- paginate	backgroundColor	<!-- backgroundImage
gaia	lead	true -->		url('https://marp.app/assets/hero-background.svg') -->

Towards a universal button grid interface

And it's open implementation

Thibaud Keller ossia.io - Maynooth University made with marp

---

An enduring practice

• Thouroughly 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 colege of Music "Grid Controller Studies" ISEL-112 [5]

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

---

Origins of backlit button grids

1998 - SP seriers (202 & 808) Performance samplers

The grid allows:

• Sampling and trigering
• Copy and paste
• Step recording

---

---

Notable instruments and sequencers

• 2007 - Tenori-on, Yamaha
• 2014 - BeatStep, Arturia Circadian Rhythm, Tip Top audio (eurorack)
• 2015 - Circuit, Novation Pokcket 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)

---

Problem

• A majority of closed source, propriatery hardware.
• No standard, or overly standardized practices
• Divergent aproaches of availabe libraries
• Many overlapping features

---

The issue of menus

---

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