One of the least beloved memories of the CD era is the unwanted glitch remix your player performed when fed a scratchy disc. Painful though it was, CD player skips may be far enough in the past to now make a comeback—as music. Sound artist Rodrigo Constanzo has streamlined the process of creating those skips using a controller called the Arc 2, an enigmatic little machine made by Monome.Monome is a maker of MIDI controllers that you likely haven’t heard of because a) they only make limited runs of their products and b) successful use of these products is limited to the musically gifted. Monome’s signature devices are simple, wordless wooden boxes bearing a grid of 64, 128, or 256 buttons, depending on the model. What you do with those buttons is up to you. They can be mapped to any software, working best with Ableton Live.Daedelus brought attention to the Monome by using a custom version of the 256 model in his live performances, allowing him to destroy and rebuild his tracks into new creations on the fly. Flying Lotus, deadmau5, and Imogen Heap also include Monome devices in their arsenals.The community of musicians and programmers that develops new uses for these open-ended instruments is constantly coming out with new applications for them. A year ago, Monome introduced the Arc series, boxes with either two or four knobs that can be used to control virtually anything. The newest application for the Arc devices comes courtesy of Constanzo.The Chocolate Grinder emulates skipping sounds from the age of the CD player using “authentic skip/glitch samples at every jump point along with weighted randomness of sample choice.” Through this method, it’s capable of emulating the skipping and seeking sounds of various generations of CD players.This is the newest of many apps developed by the Monome community. For more of these brilliant little applications, click over to the Monome site. For more sounds from Rodrigo Constanzo, hear one of his many experimental projects here.
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