Jazzmutant Lemur Control Surface

Product Info

JazzMutant's Lemur is an innovative input device to control computer real-time applications. It combines a distinctive industrial design, a brilliant modular graphic interface concept, and a unique and patented touchscreen technology that can track multiple fingers simultaneously.

Are you seriously planning to control a 32 band vocoder with a fader box? Have you ever tried to change a realistic reverb made of nearly thirty parameters in real-time? Which input device allows you to take all the benefit of a powerful physical model synthesizer?

Easy to use, fully configurable and with a great visual feedback, The Lemur is the first hardware controller which fits the ever increasing sophistication of real-time softwares.

As a performance interface, the Lemur is immediately appealing. You touch colorful rounded interface objects on the 12" LCD display to control your computer in any way you can imagine. Using an editor application running on your choice of Mac or Windows, you drag and drop switches, faders, and other objects into an exact simulation of the Lemur's screen. Make any number of interfaces, store them in an XML-based project file and it's ready to go.

Page Up and Down buttons above the display will flip through your pre-defined interface pages, instantly changing the appearance and behavior of the device. One moment you can be mixing by moving several faders simultaneously. The next moment you can be controlling a software synth or composing real-time video sequences with switches and balls that can be thrown around in a two-dimensional space.

Tap pads, drag balls, stretch strings: the Lemur understands all sorts of hand gestures and transforms them into any kind of data. Assign a fader object to change filter cutoff. Use a two-dimensional controller for multi-channel panning or scratching a sound file. Spend some quality time alone with your imagination: whether you're a composer, performer, DJ, VJ or sound designer, you will find no shortage of cool applications for this animal.

At first glance, the Lemur does not seem to be anything else than a modular and extremely versatile Star Trek style controller. In a way, that is true, in so far as the palette of user objects allows the Lemur to advantageously replace any type of known controllers, from a mixing deck to a video remote, a 16-step sequencer or any other existing control device. Merely looking for a way to trail along with your whole studio slung across the shoulder? No doubt, the Lemur is made for you!

However, if you are willing to spend some time exploring its whole potential and all its great advanced features, you will quickly realize that the Lemur is much more than a simple controller. It will literally transform your computer into a real instrument. For that purpose, in addition to the standard user interface objects (faders, switches, monitors), the Lemur's library also includes powerful and groundbreaking two-dimensional objects. Although they might puzzle you at first sight, these new objects will soon change your studio works and live performances into exhilarating experiences.

In addition to taking on any size and shape, the Lemur's user interface objects have "physical" properties (including friction, evaporation, and attraction force) that can be customized at any time - even while performing. Items can either stay where you drag them, or slide away from your finger as if on ice. Apply a gravity model to a bank of sliders and they will behave as if they were held by a virtual string. "Throw" a low-friction fader hard enough and it will bounce off the bottom of your mixer.

Last but not least, a powerful mathematical expressions parser allows you to create high level layers of interaction between your fingers, the different objects and your favourite applications. It means that you're not forced to control the nonlinear world of audio with 0 to 127 anymore: objects can be attached to arbitrary mathematical expressions to transform your movements into appropriate ranges for what you are trying to control. In addition, use the Lemur's internal accurate clock in conjunction with very basic mathematical formula and you will generate any kind of time-domain function : LFOs, envelopes, sequences, etc.

Once you will have come to grips with your Lemur, you will catch yourself playing your computer in a way you never imagine before.