This week we used some further music technology in the form of midi controllers. I used a midi keyboard in order to play drums rather than an acoustic drumkit. I did this in Ableton by using the Drum Rack plug-in. It allowed me to assign a drum sample to any individual key on the keyboard.
This worked really well and allowed me to jam with Mathew and also record a loop that continues to play after I've stopped. This means that I'm able to swap instruments throughout the performance which is something that we set out to achieve in our plans.
For the final performance, I would like to swap the midi keyboard for another midi controller like a launchpad. This is because its more appropriate for playing drums for me with appropriately weighted buttons but also is more understandable to the audience. I think that the audience might be confused as to where the drums are coming from if I'm playing keyboard.
Another problem that I came across was the laptop struggling to keep up once I started incorporating multiple layers of loops. The tempo of the song would slow down as the computer tried to process the audio. The only solution to this is to hire a more powerful laptop from the college for the night of the event with Ableton Live installed.
Here is an example of us practising using the midi keyboard -
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