Performance Rigging - a touchpad synth / sequencer paradigm

u0421793

I agree - performance rigging has to be more useful and less confusing, and it could easily turn out the other way if the design isn't careful - less useful while more confusing.

It is something I've long harboured but could never put a label to it. Long ago when I was using my Roland SH-09 [1], I noticed that I was often having one hand on the VCF cutoff and the other hand on the envelope release, for a typical thing I would do on it, which leaves no hands free to play it, so the CSQ-600 did the sequence playing. That tied up two hands to do one thing, dictated more than anything else by the physical layout of the synth. If those two sliders were next to each other, I'd have another hand free. But under what circumstances does having a VCF cutoff next to an ADSR release ever make sense? Well, for that usage, of course it did, but for logical signal flow layout, not at all. We need to understand the capabilities of the synth, through designed layout, then break free of it. The rigging is our obedient octopus.

[1] (about to be sold, buy the way, along with the companion CSQ-600 when I change the internal battery)

Jocphone

The idea is growing on me. After a bit of thought I realised this mirrors what happens with physical physics-based instruments. A change in the way that a person handles their particular instrument (no sniggering in the back row!) can produce wildly different sonic results, depending on the type of instrument of course. It is just that we don't normally separate out the noise affecting elements of a a saxophone, a drum or guitar in the same detail as would happen with a synthesizer. There are people who go into this kind of depth about their guitar tone for instance but it's not normal

For performance this idea is pretty exciting. If married up with innovative physical controllers this could open up some really expressive and possibly hilarious musical avenues.

Is it Friday afternoon at work..

JohnnyGoodyear

I imagine (on Friday afternoons) this is like conversations the boffins at Los Alamos had amongst themselves..

[Deleted User]

I think the KRFT app has some potential to be a more rigged experience. Part of the music rig experience unlike 3D visual technology, is that there aren't always clear divisions with music creation. As some others have alluded to on the thread the process of creating rigs can become an end unto itself and a compulsion often beyond conscious control or awareness. Different aspects of the ultimate rig we're developing will capture our attention and focus. In some respects it seems to address our need to express ourselves as creative individuals, a need for control, a need for predictability, a need to balance these often competing needs into some sort of coherent whole, and to reassure ourselves that we're doing this in the most efficient way possible so that we're producing quality music and not just mucking around.

u0421793

I think one important thing with performance rigging is that there should be some 'evidence' or 'indication' in terms of identification or naming of the bones that pull all the relevant synth parameters along with them. I think the eight macro knobs of the Circuit are ideal, probably don't need more than eight, but in a further version of this sort of rigging, what I might suggest is making each of those knobs different - either different colour, different size, different shape, or just give them different names (or the ability to be given different names) such as bird names, flowers, clouds, fruit etc. You know, the sort of category of names we all used to give our hard drives in the old days - pointless but differentiating.

I know it is silly, but I really think this alone might help in a way that anonymity or numbers 1 - 8 simply aren't as helpful or inspiring or memorable. Don't fall into the trap of trying to describe the internal linkages - what parameters it is dragging along - that isn't the point of the macro in performance. That'd be going backward. It needs to be an even more 'outward' identity (in either name, shape, etc.) .

However, the Circuit knobs are all knobs - all pointing the same way up, all looking the same as each other. Imagine it were not only an assortment of knob shape colour sizes, but also one were joystick-like, another like that but on its side, another more like a trackball, another like a lever, another like a slider/fader, etc. You know the kind of thing I mean? Just like in 3D rigging, it isn't a set of identical bones, it is a set that has meaning related to the intended action.

What intended actions are there in a performance? In a musical performance, what variations and options are there? What 'modes' of action does a keyboardist or guitarist or ukuleleist or trumpetist actually have to choose from, as an expressive repertoire, and do these present a changing selection depending on what 'time' we've got to in a song? If we divide a song up, typically, they'll follow 'A/B' patterns, with bridge intro and other chunks polluting that nice flip/flop progress to make it actually interesting. This might imply that in 'A', these bones do this repertoire, but in 'B', these same bones change to doing that repertiore more appropriate to what we expect from 'B' activity.

I don't know, there's no evidence and nothing's there and it's all hypothetical. But - and it's a firm but - the time will be ripe soon for performers, and audiences alike, to be doing this in the VR/AR space, and this is where I'd like to be seeing performance rigging and macro bone frameworks, rather than the (I think, will only end failure) trying to patch and noodle each individual knob or cable in VR.