Music making has involved button pressing since the 3rd century BC. Whether forcing air through tubes, banging hammers on strings or pushing voltage through USB cables, button manipulation is a classic interface between human and sound.

Push button music has evolved and exploded over the past few years. It’s history can be traced back to a number of arguable origins and originators. One of them is Brian Crabtree, who built his first prototype button matrix device in 2002. Inspired by Max, a visual programming language popular among musicians and multimedia artists, he built a “barely functional … constructed from parts found in an electronics salvage depot bin”  device that would eventually become the Monome.

Brian believed that adding visual feedback to a musical instrument would facilitate intuitive interaction. His device first grabbed the attention of musicians and performance artists when a small video clip of his performance virally circulated among music blogs around 2004

In 2006 his fledgling company released a 64 button matrix controller, the 40h. Although only 400 of these “adaptable, minimalist interfaces” were produced, these buttony boxes sent sound waves and shock waves through the music hardware industry. And as popularity grew, so did the number of buttons on the Monome.

Musicians, DJs and technogeeks embraced the concept. Square rubbery buttons would no longer be confined to rows on drum machines. They were now showing up on new instruments and in new forms. Molded silicon replaced the traditional black rubber. Velocity sensitivity was also jettisoned to make way for much more interesting electronics; lights.

The translucent silicon allowed for LED back-lighting. This added a dramatic visual aspect to this new genre of instruments, comically referred to as “blinken lights.” But the lighting was not just for show. A well programmed lighting system turns a matrix of 256 identical buttons into usable, even friendly, device. It also breaks the spacial limits of the device allowing for an unlimited number of virtual buttons and displays.

In the next installment of Welcome to the Button Matrix, we will look at more push button oddities, the Tenori-on, the new Eigenharp, the AKAI APC40, and the soon-to-be-released (and already pre-ordered) Novation Launchpad.