Things are definitely hotting up when it comes to my rig. My remit has broadened somewhat; I’m no longer thinking of it in terms of a ‘live setup’ or even as a collection of components but as a single instrument which, if I get really good at playing it, will form the basis of future musical explorations.
The addition of the foot controller not only gets me working the funky possibilities of my left foot (that’s right, funky), but allows access to changing multiple MIDI Continuous Controller parameters simultaneously. You can only get so far, compositionally speaking, tweaking one parameter at a time. Particularly if in doing so, you’re tying up the valuable resource of one of your hands.
Factor in the gear previous additions (with a few more to come) and I’m an excited camper. And that excitement isn’t just about seeing this project come to fruition, it’s about the sheer fun I’m experiencing in doing it.
Making my electronica as performance based as anything else I’ve ever done wasn’t a conscious goal but it has forced me to leave aside minutiae to facilitate the outcome, the ‘take’. That brings together the work I’ve done learning about electronic music and the kinaesthetic relationship to sound that only ‘playing’ can engender in a way that is new, for me at least.
Everything I’ve purchased so far is small, light, relatively inexpensive, readily available / replaceable and fully controllable via MIDI. When it’s a complete outfit, it will be flightcased and I look forward to taking it on the road. As much as I’m up for driving home from Adelaide etc straight after a gig, travelling to shows via airplane will be a luxurious novelty..
Permit me one gripe – as cheap, reliable MIDI controllers proliferate, why would anyone release a percussion pad that only transmits on channel 10? I know it’s the trad MIDI perc channel but really, such a small addition to firmware would make Alesis’s *pad series soo much more useful..
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