We’ve been trying to get one of these in for review for years, ever since we first spotted it at Frankfurt MESSE in 2005, we knew we must posses it (even if only for a short while). Well now we’ve finally got our hands on it, we can get stuck in. What is it?
Essentially it is a controller, able to output MIDI and more besides, you can design your own interfaces using the supplied Jazz Editor. You have a library of graphical objects - buttons, switches, knobs, faders , X/Y pads and other more unusual ones such as multi-ball controls and scrolling pads. These objects can be programmed to output MIDI data so your software can understand it. What makes this different from a traditional touchscreen, apart from the programmability, is that it can sense multiple points (fingers) at the same time - allowing for much more intuitive and dynamic control. After an esoteric start to it’s career, the Lemur has evolved to version 1.6, which has taken it away from the boffins who programmed applications for it in MAX MSP (an object oriented programming environment for educationalists and the technically minded) and brought it into the MIDI realm, where it will now happily interacts with applications we can all use thanks to the JazzDaemon. In this series of reviews, our editor Nick Batt gets his hands on the Lemur and puts it to work. More installments are going to be posted over the coming days and weeks as we discover more. If you have any comments or questions - please leave them in the comments for this story - Nick will reply to them here and try to incorporate them into future review sections.

• Jazzmutant.com

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