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Monomodular

Monomodular as a whole is a modular environment for plugin control and development for use with grid-based controllers in Max for Live. It began as a multi-color Monome experiment over two years ago. It was designed with live musical performance as its most important goal. It is currently still in development, and is being offered as beta, but is being used for both production and performance by its author and many others (so you should, too!).

Monomodular is roughly based on a server/client principle, where Monomodular is an intermediary between different plugins and controllers. The basic idea is that Monomodular offers multiple simultaneous controllers access to multiple simultaneous plugins, and does so in a seamless and transparent fashion. Monomodular stores the states of all its clients, and is capable of interpreting a library of standard functions that are called from each individual control surface type in such a manner so that it does not need to be aware of what kind of control surface is connected to it in order to interpret its calls or correctly format its returns to the receiving component. The type of data its stores is fairly generic and conforms to the monome standard in some ways, but is also fairly arbitrary in that the core can be easily modified to store different types of data to suit the situation (for instance, it has been easily adapted to handle data types and addresses for both the Livid Code and CNTRL:R hardware devices).

As of version b99, the core of Monomodular is a Python control surface plugin that runs in Ableton Live's proprietary Python environment, containing a basic framework for communicating with several types of hardware (currently Launchpad, APC20, APC40, Livid's Ohm64, Block, Code, and iPad via a custom interface built both TouchOSC and Lemur). It allows communication between up to 5 grid controllers with up to 16 client patches directly from the surface of the controller. It gives basic functionality of navigating and displaying a Monome256 workspace, and provides the base functionality for quickly writing or converting new plugins to work with its format.

As of version b993, the Monomodular Python script also contains socket functionality that allows it to natively communicate with devices designed to work with monome hardware without any further component needs. It publishes via Bonjour its address and ports, and communicates directly from the Python workings within Live.

There are many client patches included with the suite. Most of the early patches were ports of popular monome patches, but now the release includes many of amounra's own creations. The majority are for MIDI generation and generative processes, but the capabilities for using Monomodular are only limited by the imagination of the scripter.

On the MaxMSP side of things, the Monomodular format is largely dependent upon a single javascript object, which can be manipulated in many different ways. In addition to using the prebuilt mods, it offers the capability of creating one's own custom patches easily in MaxforLive and using them within the framework of Monomodular, or adapting patches that you've already built to be used with a grid controller.

Installation

You can view a more detailed explanation of how the installer works by visiting the Installation page.

How?

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Download the installer only, and use its "Subversion" button to download the most current version (recommended):

OSX Installer

Windows Installer

If you are using Windows, you will need to install the command-line subversion tool, SlikSVN (or something else that takes compatible commands).

or

Download the last major build, with all dependent files frozen, here: Monomodular b993 Content

Where?

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If you need to know where certain files are located, or would like to change some things with the installation, please refer to the Manual Installation page.

What?

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The Installer patch is a fairly simple utility that parses information about your Live and Max installations and tries to determine where files should be located on your system. Because Monomodular is not an application in itself, but instead a collection of scripts and Max patches, it is somewhat exempt from the normal routines of the average installer. The installer patch gets what information it can from Ableton's log.txt file in its preferences folder and parses the locations from your currently running instance of Live. This process is, however, not perfect, and under certain circumstances you will have to locate the correct installation paths manually.

If this is a persistent problem, please contact amounra with the specifics, and a copy of your log.txt file, so that the installer can be improved.

The installer installs three main categories of files:

Mods

MaxforLive patches that do 'something' in conjunction with a grid controller. The list is growing, but you can go to the Mods page to see what they are about. You can also access their information page from within the plugin itself by hitting the help button and linking to this wiki.

_Framework Scripts

These are the Python scripts that allow your controller to make things happen in live and link to the Monomodular hub (also a Python script).

Other Stuff

Miscellaneous files that need to be here or there in order for things to work right.

How Monomodular Works

You can read a description of the basic functionality of every Monomodular enabled control script on the How Monomodular Works page. For a detailed description of the rest of a control scripts functionality, please refer to the links below:

A Basic description of how Monomodular works

How to use the Ohm64 script

How to use the BlockMod script

How to use the LaunchMod script

How to use the Codec script

How to use the AumPC scripts

How to use the iOs scripts

Building your own Mods

What Comes with Monomodular

There is a listing of all the current content with an explanation of how they work on the Mods page. This is an evolving instruction and commentary on each plugin, so its a good idea to check back from time to time to find new information.

The Mods Listing Page