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Coming to a Stage near you

by John Mahon • 06th January 2008 • 9 comments

Jazz Mutant's Lemur & Dexter are what many in the live/producer community have been waiting, nay dreaming a long time for. A super customisable multi-touch screen midi controller. Always pushing what she does, Icelandic fairy Bjork snapped it up as soon as she saw it for her live show and many other well known producers have been eyeballing it too. Yes it has its nay sayers but lay yer hands on one and opinons might change quick smart ...

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Jazz Mutant's Lemur & Dexter are what many in the live/producer community have been waiting, nay dreaming a long time for. A super customisable multi-touch screen midi controller. Always pushing what she does, Icelandic fairy Bjork snapped it up as soon as she saw it for her live show and many other well known producers have been eyeballing it too. Yes it has its nay sayers but lay yer hands on one and opinons might change quick smart...

The Jazz Mutant website opens with the (rhetorical) question; "Hasn't every musician or producer fantasized of controlling their favourite digital audio workstation by touching the actual user interface directly on the screen ?" Whether you have or not, the posibilities of doing something like that sound more than appealing most will agree. Being able to lay your hands on what you see in front of you and not being confined by a rigid piece of hardware opens up whole new possibilities in live and studio work.

I'm not a producer although I do have a healthy interest in it. I had a go of one of these at the Future Music stand at the recent Music Ireland fair and was absolutley captivated by it. Every parameter you can think of nearly is customisable. From the size, width, height, ammount of faders, to how they react with each other and other buttons, bells & whistles on screen. I imagine a scenario where you are doing a live gig and think on the spot how you might improve your game and being instantly able to do it without having to buy new hardware or whatever. The way you can set up controls for different aspects of your set on screen also lends itself to a far more energetic live show for those who bury themselves behind a Macbook Pro on stage or are limited to the range of movement their tiny midi controller has.

Word from Berlin is Henrik Schwarz will also be using this in his new show and I couldnt think of a laptop jockey this is more suited too.

Anyway, enough ramblings from me. There will always be a place for hardware synths and controllers but this is really a new departure & way of thinking in live music.

The website says it best so have a look at it on www.jazzmutant.com

Heres a few vids too:

Comments

  • Tayor @ 6 Jan 2008 22:33

    looks great , would like to try it out . we should get enda&co to do a showcase on it in the bs. would be well into seeing how it works

  • John_Mahon @ 6 Jan 2008 22:39

    They already did a showcase in BS, about 10 people came to it though!

  • lorcan @ 7 Jan 2008 0:38

    I don't know if there were even ten, but yeah it looks cool, but I don't know how useful it'd be in practice, you don't get the tactile feedback you would with a normal midi controller. Plus it's incredibly expensive.

    Don't know if you're seen any of Johnny Lee's projects with the Wii remote (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/) but you can get most of that same functionality for a fraction of the price.

  • filthypitcher @ 7 Jan 2008 1:24

    Donnacha Costello just bought one of these controllers. He's having the time of his life.

  • Tayor @ 7 Jan 2008 8:19

    only 12 people at the last supper etc etc

  • Enda_Quealy @ 11 Jan 2008 14:20

    that showcase was a lame duck to be honest, our demo guys couldn't make it at the last minute and we enlisted the help of a friend, but he assumed it would be a cinch to set up because he's a god amongst network engineers, and didn't do his homework. big mistake!

    getting the lemur/dexter to talk across a network to different pc's and programs simultaneously is the biggest challenge with this device, but once you get your head around that, it's a dream to use. We'll showcase it properly soon, the lads are getting ready to bring it to the music tech courses in Dun Laoighre at the moment, maybe some time in March might suit.. unless you've all gone down the wii remote route at that stage, the professional's choice ;0)

  • rudiger @ 13 Jan 2008 17:22

    I think Stephan Bodzin was using this with Ableton when he played in Spirit (Spirit 57) (no maybe Academy). I was wondering what the hell it was

  • this is my shame @ 15 Jan 2008 18:55

    They do look a bit pricey and maby delicacte for regular giging, wonder how durable the touch-screen is? I would always use an external mixer for ableton, so the trigger finger does alot of what i need but still want something a bit more versatile. Would love to try one out.

  • Enda_Quealy @ 20 Jan 2008 20:48

    They're surprisingly robust, and the screen has a replaceable safety layer. If you'd like to try it out, we have one set up in the office; just ring for an appointment. Cheers..

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