Barcelona’s Sonar International Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Art provided the launch pad for a new modular touch control system for Ableton Live and iPad from Liine – which aims to ‘redefine the way people interact with sound’.

Griid has been developed by British-Canadian electronic music pioneer Richie Hawtin (aka Plastikman), along with the Liine team, who he describes as a group sharing a mutual passion for music and technology. The first in a series of interconnected control modules for Ableton Live, Liine is the latest development in a long music career from Hawtin who believes in taking a ‘top-down’ approach to music control – ‘development begins and ends with the performance experience in mind’. Griid’s touch objects and gestures are refined through a back-and-forth process which blurs the boundary between stage and laboratory.

The first and core module of the concept, Griid is an advanced clip grid interface that allows any clip to be found and fired any at any time, without missing a beat. Finely tuned for rapid navigation, it is intended for DJs playing Live sets of any size, using control similar to that of the iPhone and iPad adapted for music control. The module comes in three versionas, with three Griid Pro making best use of the iPad’s premium screen size, the pocket-portable Griid for iPhone and iPod Touch, and Griid Lite available for free. Each version features the same design, making clip information easy to see at a glance.

Griid is now available on the iTunes store for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Further control modules will become available over coming months.

More: http://griid.net