Wednesday, 3 October 2007

Additions

My live set at Bangface last year consisted of stepping through pre-programmed loops and mixing the individual elements. The other week at the Hague, I added knob tweaking of the sounds themselves. For the forthcoming Japan gigs, I have just finished coding some new functions that change the material in more radical ways during playback. Those under joypad control: Glitch (repeating a small part of the sequence until released), Repeat / speed change (can make live beats sound a bit like timestretching, or turn pitched sequences into space invaders), Nudge (moves the beat forwards or backwards a bit), Reverse (handy for getting the most out of a drum pattern), Freeze, and Fold (for the MIDI-style sequencer, takes the last material played live and folds it back into the sequence.) The keyboard can be used to transpose any or all of the sequencers currently playing, either all at once, cycling through each one with each key press, or picked at random. Parts can be programmed live, such as drum beats or step sequencer pitches. These additions will hopefully introduce a bit more spontaneity into the set.
I still never actually used my cyber-glove for anything, despite spending a week programming the interface / receiving code 2 years ago, maybe now is the time.

edit: Now with added jumbling of drum patterns. How to randomly shuffle a pattern without it resulting in total entropy (and therefore loss of the groove)? 2 ways I found, one: pin every 4th quarter note (keeps the kicks and snares in place, if you make vaguely "electro" music - which I do) and shuffle everything else. Two, shuffle the beats around but make them keep their place, in groups of 8. So the beat on step 2 might end up at 10, 18 or 26. The groove will change, but still retain something of its original meaning.

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