Electronic Music 411 - bla live at stfu glasgow 06

11/17/06 + bla

thanks everyone
i blame the dude in charge of the desk at the venue for it being quiet- i played the loudest patch on full volume in the soundcheck and he set it to what he thought was a reasonable level but it shouldve been set to as loud as possible without being too loud because most of my set was much quieter than that- i guess i couldve explained that too him a bit better- no wait a minute its my fault because i set the record level on the minidisc
i was a lot more animated for this than my helsinki one (well my fingers were anyway)- i was pretty tired when i did this (as you can probably tell by my face in the pic)
everything was coming from the sequencer (i didnt touch the crappy keys on the dx100- or the pitch and mod wheels i dont think)- all i did was change which tracks of midi were outputting to the dx100- mostly i just switched on and off the last 4 tracks- i dont think i touched the 1st 4 that had the note patterns much- when those are switched back on during a note it triggers the note at that moment so thatd be unsequenced hand rhythm
the dx100 can sound much better than that
i programmed it all in a bit of a rush (wasnt long after stfu helsinki and i made all new sounds since then)
the sounds ended up all being quite similar- they all had the same envelopes- no attack, slowest decay, highest sustain, no release
the main differences were the lfo and the tuning (and the algorhythm (1-8 twice for the 16 sounds i used))
the sequencer pattern was kind of like a test pattern to play while programming the sounds on the dx100- 2 notes in each of 8 octaves with 1 note on each 16th note step in a 4 beat bar- each note was sustained to the end of the bar which means by the last step theres 16 notes together which is more than the polyphony of the dx100
i think all the notes were on different velocities to get the full range of values going to the dx100 to see how the velocity sensetivity affects the sound
then i programmed a different rhythm of 16 pitch bend values- i put in between each one another value on the 32nd note steps that was 1/2 way between the ones before and after it to make it smoother- still not in the slightest bit 'bendy'
then i did errrrrr modulation data in the same way and then volume change data
then i put a program change on each step- started all on program 1 then i tried out each program on each step and chose the best sound for each making sure there was 1 of each of the 16 sounds i made
then i remembered that the dx100 could respond to breath control data and portamento time changes so i copied the pattern to make it 8 beats and changed 1/2 the modulations into volumes and turned the volume track into the breath control and portamento values
so there was quite a lot of stuff going into the dx100 but when it was all on at once it didnt sound like there was much going on- mostly because the program changes cut off the sound so each note can only play for 1 step
but theres a lot off different combinations of values possible so i had to try to find good sounds hidden within it by pressing different track mute buttons and try to respond to the rhythm it makes
much funs anyway

Recent blogs: programmers please help, bla live at bitjam at the rigger feb 08, alesis hr16