I haven't forgotten that I committed to making music last week! In fact, I've turned my synths on almost every day this week and noodled a little. I've rearranged things a few times and am probably not done rearranging but I feel good (and nervous) about playing some music live on the internet this Sunday! Probably around 7pm Pacific; I'll blog about it with a YouTube link when I confirm, later this week.
I'll play for about an hour, like I used to. I want to try to make something that doesn't sound like minor variations on a single four-bar loop the whole time, like I also used to, but I do want it to feel cohesive. I'm treating it like so many of the jazz and jazz-like live shows I've seen recently, where there is lots of improvisation but it's the same few players with their individual instruments the whole time.
The specific "players" I've chosen are:
Digitakt II for drums. I'll set up about a dozen different organic-sounding samples and stick to them for the whole set, but try to introduce some of them later on to bring some interest and novelty. I am considering pre-writing a few patterns that I can flip between throughout the show, making heavy use of probability and the "Fill" feature for a lot of variation and surprises (for you and for me). I want this to not sound like house music, which means the bass drum will not be so prominent, and it probably won't be the lowest-frequency sound in the mix. (That'll be the bass.)
The bass is set up right now with an Erica Synths DB-01, because it's very immediate and pleasantly limited and has a nice sequencer for quickly generating random patterns in a given scale. Those patterns are not super tweakable so I'm debating bringing in something different for this. I plan to not really mess with the timbre of the bass voice once I dial it in, much like how the timbre of an upright bass kind of just is what it is, so this whole voice might get relegated to one of the tracks on the Digitakt, maybe paired with an external sequencer. Maybe I'll write a little program on the Tulip?
The lead/rhythm/pad voice is more loose. I'm using the Novation Peak into the Hologram Chroma Console into the Hologram Microcosm. That provides a lot a lot of different kinds of sounds and a lot of modulation, which is a little dizzying but should keep things fresh throughout. The Microcosm also has a looper, so I can layer some different ideas together. I'm debating adding another looper at the end of this chain (specifically the TC Electronic Ditto X4, which has dual stereo MIDI-syncable tracks, hell yeah) but that might get even more overwhelming. I'll play this voice with an Arturia Keystep mk2, which has a sequencer as well as some generative features to "mutate" a sequence randomly in scale.
A microphone (Shure SM58) into a vocal processor (TC-Helicon PERFORM-VE) into an Empress ZOIA Euroburo running the Loop Forest patch by Jeremy Blake. This is for vocals! I'm gonna sing maybe! I chose a poem from which I will recite excerpts and riff. The PERFORM-VE also has a looper so I can get some stuff going, and the ZOIA patch produces lots of unsynced micro-loops for texture. I might also use a trumpet! I haven't really played trumpet in decades but I exhumed mine yesterday and while my tone is not good, I definitely still remember how to play it, so that remains an option.
And that's it! It's kind of a lot to keep track of but for most of the performance I plan to be turning different drum voices on and off every few bars, fussing with the bass pattern also every few bars, humming or vocalizing kind of throughout hopefully without thinking too much about it, and then mainly messing with the lead voice. That should be where most of the "ear candy" is, lilting over the foundation of the rhythm section.
I didn't really plan to write this up in so much detail but that's blogs, baby. And that's all I'm gonna write this week! See you Sunday! I'll share the recording of that afterwards also in case I don't see you Sunday. Bye.