Microsoft Wants To Make Your Next Gigantic MIDI Controller

It looks like Microsoft wants to make your next gigantic MIDI controller. 

This video, via deadmau5, captures him working with “some pretty righteous touch software that drives the OSC / MIDI to… other … stuff.”

This looks a lot like the work Smithson Martin did with their giant Emulator controllers and similar to TouchOSC on the iPad.

Per deadmau5, the giant touchscreen MIDI controller is “still early in development, but were making great progress.”

Check it out and let us know what you think!

17 thoughts on “Microsoft Wants To Make Your Next Gigantic MIDI Controller

  1. Looks cool if by cool you mean getting in a workout with your production.

    If it’s “live” I think they should shrink the play button so it’s not so obvious…..

  2. Groan. I don’t need scaled up buttons on a scaled up touch-screen. I need *hundreds* of touch items on a larger screen that size.
    These demo’s look like they are for the impaired to mash with their dialling-wands.

  3. This is the same company who drove me to Macs with $#@! Win95 and dropped a steaming load of Vista on us. Unfortunately, they do not seem to understand how artists generally work, so their conceptual workflow is almost always very poor. I see some great Windows-only items that prove a good designer can make it fly (H. G. Fortune synths come to mind), but its not exactly what they’re known for.

    My Ultimate Question about touch screens (some of which I do like) is this: Does it either enhance your established type of workflow or offer you a genuinely new approach you can embrace musically? It’ll have to mature a bit more before I’ll be willing to spend time on a new interface. That takes too much energy away from what I can do in the actual Now. I love the toys in general, but the #1 job will always be to serve my central fun-spark. It should require effort without becoming nasty old Work. I was elated to be able to leave MIDI Spaghetti behind. The day pads come to a similar point for me, I’ll buy TWO. 😛

    1. My answer to your question is touch screens offer (for me at least) a genuinely new approach. Specifically two apps – animoog and samplr, both of which exploit the touch surface brilliantly.

      1. If you ever try an app like Audulus, you’ll understand why these big touchscreen might be appealing.

        Unfortunately, Microsoft never seems to get new tech right until it’s gone through a couple of generations. This example looks like a waste of good technology.

  4. “That board with a nail in it may have defeated us, but the humans won’t stop there. They’ll make bigger boards and bigger nails, and soon, they will make a board with a nail so big, it will destroy them all!” – Kang / Treehouse of Horror II

  5. 3 faders, 3 knobs, a 5×5 grid of triggers, and what appears to be an x/y pad or 6 on/off signals. amazing.

    thats ~1/3rd of a nanokontrol ($49, has 8 faders 8 knobs, 3 buttons per fader+ transport controls), one more trigger pad then a mpd18 + lpd8 ($99+$69, mpd has 16 pads + fader, lpd has 8 knobs and 8 pads), and to cover the cube thingy- a nanopad ($49, 8 pads + x/y surface).

    thats 32 pads, 24 buttons, 16 knobs, 9 faders, and transport control for ~$270; and all easily fits in a single backpack with room for more.

    how much would they want for this touchscreen/monitor/controller, and why would anyone want to use/carry it around?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *