Jazzmutant’s Lemur touch control interface is an amazing piece of hardware that has been utilize by many an artist, including Daft Punk. The problem with the Lemur more than anything is the price. At nearly $3,000 it is quite a hefty sum for most artists to shell out. 

Fear not though, the open source community has come through again with an alternative to the Lemur called the MonoTouch Live Project. The Monotouch Live Project is a software development project designed to take advantage of touch screen tablet PC’s. 

Quote:

“The [Monotouch] software package is a stand-alone software controller, with a six channel mixer, designed to allow control over Ableton Live with a touch screen, bringing compatibility to both Windows XP and Apple bootcamp machines. Using the touch screen interface and a normal display, the innovation is almost ready for its first release, and incorporates a crossfader, various start stop buttons, track navigation alongside effect parameters and eq in its simple yet powerful interface…The basic idea is take advantage of any computer capable of managing two monitors at same time (dual desktop, extended desktop). Absolutely all new models of PC notebooks, and new Intel Macs, can support this feature. MonoTouchLive runs on the second LCD touch screen capable monitor, or can run on tablet PC and take control of remote machine using IP over LAN software.”

The software currently only supports single touch capbilities due to the limitations of current touch screen monitors, but the platform developer currently seems to be very receptive to suggestions based on the information on his website. A soon to be release version in the future will allow for customized interfaces.

The software currently appears to be in a sort of BETA with a demo available to everyone and a full FREE unlocked version to you once you write back to the author to express your thoughts and current setup with the software. 

Monotouch Live Midi Controller Project