http://monome.org/

they make these in philadelphia pa usa (where i live)

the shit looks crazy, but youd have to know all about midi signals and have all your shit in the computer

Most of them monome dudes use custom MAX/MSP patches and such with em.

what is that? is that like the one video on there where the guy has an mpc emulator on the computer

max/msp is a program that allows you to create pretty much anything to process audio and video in real time, it is kinda like the dream weaver of creating programs to process music and audio, almost like writing code, but its more of a visual thing where you just call command, set the parameters and connect different pieces together.....its pretty big in my school in the program i am in, i go to a big engineering school, but i am in the electronic media and arts program and its a pretty serious little niche in the university community, they got some cool people....but i have taken alot of the music courses there, which usually resolve around some comp music shit, and this semester in one of my classes we went fairly in depth into max, shit could be really real for somebody that took the time to learn it, its pretty easy once you learn to link messages and commands and what the different commands are

before i got my 404 i set up a sampler of sorts in max where i could trigger samples i cut in cubase with different keys on the keyboard, and i saw a performance this year where two people had two computers with motion sensor cameras hooked up to them, and through a max patch had a full length movie with a bunch of scenes in it that they would pan between and scratch back and forth time was with movements in there hands, it was pretty out there but real cool too......

speakin of my school music program, i got to take an afro cuban percussion course this semester with one of the original drummers from the gil scott heron band, he is the vp of student life at my school and teaches this course every other semester, it was pretty fuckin sweet, just rocked out on claves, cowbells, shakarays, and congos all semester, learned complex polyrhythms and would jam with the professor soloing the congo over us, definitely helped with my drummin game