Who needs keys

[ShogunSpy]

http://youtu.be/Q8AxhbCL-rM

[Bud Weiser]

keyboardplayers need keys, who else ?

I´d have no fun sitting in front of a "gesture controller" and trigger loops, sequences, phrases and slices on a laptop or desktop.
OTOH, I find it cool what others develop as an alternative to traditional music instrument interfaces,- but it´s not what I want to learn in my age.
It´s also not the music I like much and for the music I prefer I need traditional interface as well as music notation.

Bud

[Neil B]

I liked it - nice find.

I'd agree with Bud Weiser to some extent and I prefer proper, skilful musicians to such as me with a daw & a keyboard & every editing facility under the sun, but there is room for alternatives. Everything progresses and musical instruments are a part of that.

One of my particular favourites at the moment is this one using a Novation Launchpad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXLL46xkdlY

Respect to anyone who can play that thing like that!
Neil

[kensuguro]

the sort of 3d / 2d spatial mapping type controllers just need to be used right. I don't know if there's been an exhaustive exploration, since the concepts been around forever, but not really having a meaningful impact. (excluding traditional instruments) I think whatever the controlling methodology is, needs to impact how the music is conceived and executed. In many cases, the new controller becomes an "alternative", where what gets accomplished is no different from what could have been achieved more naturally through simpler, more readily accessible methods.

If a new controller comes out that uses 3D x-ray beams, thermal sensors, gps, all combined with live data from the stock market with my tax return data sprinkled on top of it, and the output was a piano playing a C major chord... it's difficult to say that the controller made way for new thoughts to be thought, or unlocked a whole new level of music never achieved before. It might, but a piano playing a C major chord isn't the best demonstration.

But again, the exploration is very valuable. We mustn't ever stop.

[Nestor]

In my understanding, it is a nice music toy, that’s all it is.

What can you expect from a way of doing music that is not controllable at will, all you can control is a few parameters and in a very poor way, harmonically for instance, this piece of music is dead. As it is not a controllable mean, it is not an “instrument” in the sense that you cannot really express what you want; it is rather the computer expressing itself, mechanically, through what has been programmed.

Samples trigger themselves between a very close frame of events, and all you know and can do is starting and stopping events. Events that, in fact, you don’t really know what are going to do exactly. So there are two negative points to it, first, you can only play fixed samples, two, you cannot express yourself precisely.

It is a fun toy, it would be cool to play with it for about 30 minutes, but then every musician acquainted in their instruments, would come immediately back to them, there is no way to compare this toy to a real keyboard.

This thing could be cool for people that are not musicians, and to start a show, but not much more than that I think. It is cool that you can move your hands without anything else, and the thing starts sounding, yes, that's fun... But as a replacement for a keyboard? Never!

As long as something like this is understood in its real meaning and value, we are ok, but when people, because of their lack of knowledge of the world of music, believe this is a work of genius, we are in trouble.

[braincell]

I imagine the Kinect 2 would work better. I don't know if it is going to be great though. In the future yes, something like this would work well. A dancer could be a musician and a musician, a dancer. It would have to be extremely accurate to be any fun and then the software would have to be right also.

[kensuguro]

A dancer could be a musician and a musician, a dancer.

I think this is a "mapping" issue. A controller is just an input point. On a synth it's velocity, note number, all the CCs, LFO, EG etc.. On a modular synth, you take inputs and you map them to some aspect of the sound. With the same set of inputs, and depending on how the mapping is done, it can vary from a straight synth sound, a mega expressive sound that responds very well to key input, or a self evolving sound like a pad that goes on forever, etc. Reminds me of the d-beam. It's a cool input, but it needs to be mapped something interesting, for it to be anything beyond an x-y joystick.

But once the mapping is there, then there needs to be bidirectional communication, or a feedback loop. The input is adjusted by the output, the output is adjusted by the input. That's where it becomes difficult to just map anything to just anything. A dancer's movement can be mapped to music, but if the dancer is just executing prebuilt choreography (for an existing piece), or is improvising without regard to the music being generated, then most of the "musicianship" needs to happen in how the movements are interpreted and mapped to the generated music.. If the "musicianship" is preserved external to the dancer, then I would conclude that the input is inherently inconsequential to the system. The dancer can be swapped with a bunch of spiders without much consequence.

But if the dancer understood the all the mappings, the movements were mapped in such a way to require the dancer to think and execute movement with musicianship, then the feedback is happening, as the dancer's movement controls the output, and the output controls the dancer's movement. It requires some musical knowledge, imagination, and practice to master. Unfortunately, in a lot of these collaborative exercises, both parties are unwilling to invest enough time to go that far deep into the other's discipline, that while the two get connected through some sort of mapping, the results do not speak to each other too well. (because essentially, they both just do their thing) The connection exists, but most of the work is done through two, discrete systems, with the output merely summed in the end.

Of course, this is expanding the perspective to mapping of humans and disciplines.. but it does shed light on the true complexities involved in creating a great mapping.. or an instrument that is able to be controlled musically. And it takes a lot of thought and work.. but I think when it is one right, the results can be amazing. I've played around with a lot of alternative mappings, but never really pushed as far as the keyboard controller. But I also feel like that's sort of where everyone's at.

[garyb]

A dancer could be a musician and a musician, a dancer.

thank you Mr. Theremin!

http://www.moogmusic.com/legacy/pulling ... n-theremin

Leon even shacked up with a dancer....

[borg]

http://vimeo.com/77879773

all you need is PureData (or MaxMSP), some cheap gamer gadgets, and imagination/patience/knowledge.

[JoPo]

... It mays be just a playback and the guy dances with his hands to let us believe he plays music..!

[braincell]

Actually a spider might make an interesting sound depending on the software but it's not a good analogy to a dancer who is highly trained and moving every body part in perfect synchronization to a beat. I'm sure I have an entirely different definition of what music is than Kensuguro does. My idea of the perfect music is this:

http://youtu.be/NKhjIlnxJZw

I love the John Cage quote "I like sound. I don't like any psychology in my music."