Tech

There was once a college kid who was petrified of anything covered in LEDs, who would have a meltdown over trying to hook up an effects loop on a 12-channel mixer, and who had the distinction of nearly destroying a Roland A-80 keyboard controller by forgetting to unplug it and walking away with the bit of equipment it was hooked into. It fell off the piano and landed with a crash.

Yes, that was me. Fortunately, time and perseverance can make up for a lack of aptitude, and music technology is (mostly) blessed with an internal logic that rewards the patient. Today I play on a custom laptop looping station, constructed out of:

  • A Roland A-90 88-key controller (the A-80 is out to pasture after long and faithful service)
  • 2 Korg Nanokontrol MIDI channel strips
  • A Faderfox LC2 DJ MIDI controller
  • A MOTU Ultralite MkIII firewire audio interface
  • A MOTU Micro Express MIDI interface
  • A Roland JV-1080 Rack Synthesizer
  • A Kurzweil K2500 Rack Synthesizer
  • A Yorkville 50W Keyboard Amp
  • A Macbook Pro Core II Duo Laptop, 2.16Ghz
  • A Samson Patchbay
  • Hand-built MIDI, patch and power cables, to cut down on the spaghetti factor.

At the heart of the rig is Ableton Live (v8), a program that features unique "liquid audio" capabilities like glitchless loop recording and launch, non-destructive tempo shifting and key- and midi-mappable controls. What sets Live apart from a professional hardware looper like the Gibson Echoplex is its fluid configuration and ability to record, mix and archive dozens of improvisations in a single session without the need for a separate dedicated recording program. I'm going to sound like a shill for Ableton here, but it's hands down the most incredible DAW that anyone has put together. It will be a cold day in hell when I touch Digital Performer or Pro Tools again.

To free up both hands for playing, I eventually built a parametric control pedal from a Macintosh keyboard circuit board - a companion Max patch allows me to use it to scroll around slots in Live while using the same dedicated footswitch to record on any of them.

Other excursions into the realm of music technology include a variety of Max/MSP patches, including a multitap delay and a couple of audio-controlled tap tempo utilities, work with piezo contact microphones, and research into using FM radio transmitters and receivers as a low-budget in-ear monitoring system. I still tune pianos occasionally, though six years of bar rock have obliterated some of the higher partials.

The Setup in Pictures


For a little more detail on how I put the system together I've included a short slide show, which can be accessed by mousing over the tab above. The pictures (top to bottom, right to left) show:

1. Me busting out the two-keyboard style in a class last year, surrounded by the setup;

2. My MIDI mixing and control board, custom mounted to sit over the A-90's less useful controls, with input channels to the right and output channels to the left;

3. The snake of USB and standard MIDI cables used to connect the control board with the laptop and rack gear, merged to the laptop with a mini USB hub;

4. Front view of the various rack pieces;

5. Rear view with the closed laptop, USB snake plugged into one side, MIDI interface into the other, firewire from the audio interface claiming the last port;

6. The business end of the rolling cart the rack gear is mounted on, showing the amplifier and cord reel;

7. The control pedal I built, with a spring-loaded, silent treadle footswitch to punch record in/out - I'm like the princess and the pea when it comes to the noise and timing slop that come with traditional guitar-style footswitches. The four arcade buttons move around in Live's clip matrix, while the top ones handle functions such as reset and delete;

8. Screenshot of the Max patch that makes the pedal do its thing. Anyone really interested in how it works can download it and commence tinkering.

9. Ableton Live's main window, showing the template configuration I use, with channels corresponding to the physical mixing boards. Ableton's Looper effect is set up on the first output channel so that I don't have to tap a tempo as the teacher counts me in - just start playing and the effect calculates the tempo on punch-out. Brilliant.

That's the beast in a nutshell. Believe it or not, my setup time is six or seven minutes on a good day. Not exactly on par with pulling a kazoo out of your pocket, but hey.


Now Playing

The track cued up in the audio player acknowledges the debt I owe to Nigerian pop icon Fela Kuti, whose evening-length keyboard and saxophone odysseys were propelling dancers around long before Bill T. Jones decided to do a musical about him. It's three repetitions of a dance combination butted up against each other. The third time around has a hint of Stevie Wonder in it; synth strings weren't really Fela's thing.