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Private company

Monome

Open hardware manufacturer and its series of minimalist user interface and sound devices based in Delhi1

Monome is an Upstate New York-based company, founded by Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain, that produces sound modules and MIDI controllers. Monome is also the name of their initial product, a grid-based controller that is now sometimes simply referred to as grid.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

2005Founded1

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Monome-family-stretta-20110321
Photo: Matthew Davidson, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons4

Monome is an Upstate New York-based company, founded by Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain, that produces sound modules and MIDI controllers. Monome is also the name of their initial product, a grid-based controller that is now sometimes simply referred to as grid.2

Products and brands

Since 2006, several models have been produced, with typical sizes ranging from 64 to 256 buttons — plus a very limited run of 512-button devices.

In 2011, the first non-grid controller in the Monome family was introduced, the Monome Arc. The Monome Arc consists of two aluminum knobs mounted on a rectangular walnut box. Each knob is surrounded by a ring of 64 LED lights, and similarly to the Monome, affords function only by USB connection to an application.

In September 2013, Monome introduced another open-sourced music device, the music computer called Aleph. Aleph contains four digital inputs and outputs, four control voltage inputs and outputs, multiple optical encoders, a display screen and USB - all of which can be completely reprogrammed at the software level. Full release and distribution was planned for late Fall 2013.

From Wikipedia’s article on Monome, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Timeline

  1. 2005Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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