Massive MIDI Station Ditches The Monitor

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WQU-Lrm3D8]

Who need’s a touch screen when you’ve got 800 inputs each backlit with an RGB LED? This impressive controller was built by Ander for use in his performances. He did it with the intent to get rid of the computer monitor in his setup. We think there’s something to be said about that. It seems weird to go to a performance and see the artist staring at a screen the whole time. Unfortunately we don’t have too many details about the hardware but we can tell you that he’s using Ableton Live on the software side of things.

15 thoughts on “Massive MIDI Station Ditches The Monitor

  1. I love seeing stuff like this! Back in my tracking days, I longed for a nice controller that I could never afford. When I finally ponied up $1k for an MC-505, it pained me to not be able to better interact with my computer. Ableton live is just awesome and this custom controller makes me wanna dive back in to music.

  2. That is AMAZING. I want one.

    As for the layout of the buttons, if you’ve ever seen the interface for Live in loop mode(not track mode) it looks pretty much exactly like this controller. It looks like he’s just mapped physical controls to all of the on-screen buttons. Here’s a general example:

    http://macmusica.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/ableton-live.jpeg

    Each of the little rectangular buttons at the top triggers a loop or sample which can be set, quantized, and distorted in any way. They are organized horizontally into channels(columns).

    The other rotary encoders are ‘sends’ to determine how much of each channel goes through effects loops, pan, and volume. Next to each of the channel meters there are Solo/Mute buttons and below that there are Pre/post Fader Listen(cue) buttons.

    It’s a very simple but powerful program, and it’s also very simple to map to a MIDI device(great LEARN feature) of any size, shape, or sort. This controller is hands-down the coolest thing I’ve ever seen it connected to.

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