Mad musician makes a minimalist maze on his monome (video)

What do you do when you're sick of making music on your instruments? You hack them to play video games, apparently. YouTube user silverspaceship (real name Sean) worked up some code he calls monomAZe 3D, enabling you to take a journey into a very old-school 3D maze on your two fifty six edition monome, which (if you hadn't guessed) features a grid of 256 light up buttons. The intent of the device is making trippy music (such as the soundtrack to this video), but apparently it can also take you on a trip, which is mighty neat in our book. Cost of entry? About $1,400 for the two fifty six, if you can find one, but at least the source code is free.

[Slick Posted May 20th 2010 6:24PM]

Alliteration will get you no where Stevens.


/s

[tobsmonster2 Posted May 20th 2010 6:25PM]

@Slick
force choke?

[Lord Vader Posted May 20th 2010 6:39PM]

@Slick Force Choke!

[Rainier Posted May 20th 2010 6:32PM]

"Lite-Brite, Lite-Brite. Turn on the magical shining light!"

[Quick6 Posted May 20th 2010 6:33PM]

I wonder if Apple denied this for the app store so he decided to port it to the monome... There goes another developer.

[someToast Posted May 20th 2010 6:43PM]

@Quick6 Aren't there enough actual Apple-related posts for you to whine on?

[Quick6 Posted May 20th 2010 6:56PM]

@someToast Ha, it was a joke. Darth please use the force to get someToast a tissue. ;)

[Maxwell Posted May 20th 2010 7:52PM]

@Quick6

Joke: a humorous anecdote or remark intended to provoke laughter.

You are missing one crucial ingredient.

[Quick6 Posted May 20th 2010 8:04PM]

@Maxwell Yeah I guess if you missed all the apple turmoil lately and have no sense of humor... I guess I get your point.

[Maxwell Posted May 21st 2010 6:39AM]

@Quick6 I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but you are just not funny, and were trying to shoehorn Apple into an article that has nothing to do with them.

[Quick6 Posted May 21st 2010 11:59AM]

@Maxwell Well i'm glad YOU took it upon yourself to let me know how you feel. Very persistent, pat yourself on the back.

[someToast Posted May 20th 2010 6:41PM]

Take THAT, Merlin!

[DeviantmacG Posted May 20th 2010 6:45PM]

wtf

[DougieBear Posted May 20th 2010 6:58PM]

I've always wanted a dot matrix synthesizer. Why do you make them so expensive yamaha?!

[tengobotas Posted May 20th 2010 7:01PM]

This should feature Daedelus as well since hes done so much to make the monome famous. Not to mention some of his music is great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRJ2YvRv3N4

[ethanlechcharles Posted May 20th 2010 10:18PM]

@tengobotas
"Not to mention all of his music is fantastic"

Fixed.

Monomers are my favourite people. I wish I didn't have to sell mine.

[Wierde2003 Posted May 20th 2010 7:06PM]

It didn't sound as much like an instrument as it did a SciFi sound effect. I wouldn't buy one, but it would be neat to try out!

[dovemouse Posted May 20th 2010 7:35PM]

@the bandit you can already play pong. go buy. you won't regret it!

[eyerot Posted May 20th 2010 7:41PM]

Looks like Dungeons of Daggorath for CoCo2.

[KittenMittens Posted May 20th 2010 8:28PM]

I think there's a bit of miscommunication going on here, partly by some of the comments made in the article. The monome does not make sound at all, it is merely a grid of buttons and lights (some with an accelerometer) that connects to your computer via usb, the software/application you are using determines what the buttons, lights, and accelerometer do, and what sounds if any are made. There are many applications out there that do all kinds of different things, from sequencers to games like tetris and pong. It's more like an open source controller than a synthesizer, to say you do or don't like it's sounds is just silly. It's still very very cool though, I encourage you to check it out.

[ik09 Posted May 20th 2010 9:24PM]

If you can't stomach the price you can always build an Arduinome. It is the open-source version of Monome and has a strong community over at the monome.org forums.

[Italianguy Posted May 20th 2010 9:32PM]

But can it run Crysis?

[Italianguy Posted May 20th 2010 9:34PM]

@Italianguy In all seriousness though, that is one interesting instrument. I've never heard of it before.

[TC Posted May 21st 2010 5:19AM]

@Italianguy
That's what SHE said!

[soundcyst Posted May 21st 2010 1:52AM]

@the bandit
http://vimeo.com/355984

[meijerpb Posted May 21st 2010 3:41AM]

Nice. The 3D maze view reminds me of the Javascript "Xpounded Simple 3D Maze" by Robert Spoons,

http://www.seeingwithsound.com/3dmaze.htm

[SHFT Posted May 21st 2010 5:18AM]

The monome a truly magical device! (no sarcasme)

[Jacxz Posted May 21st 2010 3:48PM]

makes me think of doom ;)

[Penguina Posted May 21st 2010 4:16PM]

Wow. I just had a huge flashback to an old adventure game I played on the TRS-80 (eary 1980's) called Aslyum.

[Penguina Posted May 21st 2010 4:18PM]

@Penguina -- I meant "Asylum"