Re: Use of controllers

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

I'm totally with Mark on this! You should start your research based  
on your musical needs rather than available technical options in gear.

> For
> guitar, buttons suck, so it's all on the floor.
I actually had a funny solution for playing guitar looping without  
floor controller pedals in the 80-90's. I was using a MIDI guitar and  
mapped certain MIDI note numbers of different strings to zones in a  
sampler, where I had to prepare the loops in advance. The idea was to  
play "normal" guitar not knowing what loops were loaded into the  
sampler and challenge oneself by adapting your improvisation to the  
soundscapes that was brutally thrown into the music when you happened  
to pass by a "trigger note" on the fretboard. Eventually I may return  
to that concept now when using the EWI for "MIDI Looping" in Logic  
(but then mapping different generative processes to those trigger  
notes).

per



On 10 dec 2006, at 07.36, mark sottilaro wrote:

> it really depends on a lot of things.  What's your
> instrument?  When I'm playing keyboard I have buttons
> programmed on the controller to control my loops.  For
> guitar, buttons suck, so it's all on the floor. Some
> functions like loop volume work best as a expression
> pedal, others foot switches.  I find the Handsonic
> funny because a lot of the presets use the D-Beam
> (Infrared beam of light) to trigger a sound, and it's
> nearly imossible for me to make it work in any
> accurate way.  However, it's great for controlling
> pitch and effect/modulation controls.
>
> Really you can do anything a million ways, the most
> important thing is becoming comfortable and intimate
> with your hardware interface so it becomes second
> nature to use.
>
> Mark
>
> --- Sean Onion <sean@zwieble.com> wrote:
>
>> What's the best use of controllers in a performance
>> looping setup?  That
>> is, what would you use switches, pedals (rockers),
>> knobs, sliders and
>> keyboard for?  And a corollary to that question is
>> where: floor or on a
>> stand?
>>
>> Thanks folks,
>> Sean