Buzz Word Alert: What the hell is Controllerism?

[Davo]

I appreciate everyone's input. I'm going to conclude there's no real definition of controllerism. It's either about quality of performance, perceived skill of performance or perceived skill with instrument, an act of performance that shows perceived skill, an entertaining performance or a scene/culture focused on the subject of electronic music performance or skill with MIDI controllers.

I think it is unreasonable to conclude that there is no definition. Dictionaries define words based on their actual usage. It seems fair to define the word based on the community that use it (ie all of the above contributors). It appears to have two meanings:

1. Expertise in using knobs and sliders to produce musical effects
2. A tendency to make ridiculous gestures while moving knobs and sliders with the intention of appearing cool (see poseur, wanker)

[friend_kami]

I appreciate everyone's input. I'm going to conclude there's no real definition of controllerism. It's either about quality of performance, perceived skill of performance or perceived skill with instrument, an act of performance that shows perceived skill, an entertaining performance or a scene/culture focused on the subject of electronic music performance or skill with MIDI controllers.

I think it is unreasonable to conclude that there is no definition. Dictionaries define words based on their actual usage. It seems fair to define the word based on the community that use it (ie all of the above contributors). It appears to have two meanings:

1. Expertise in using knobs and sliders to produce musical effects
2. A tendency to make ridiculous gestures while moving knobs and sliders with the intention of appearing cool (see poseur, wanker)

you sure do like prejudice, don't you?

[Davo]

you sure do like prejudice, don't you?

I'm not pre-judging anything, just summarizing.

[friend_kami]

you sure do like prejudice, don't you?

I'm not pre-judging anything, just summarizing.

so if you are a controllerist you are, according to your definition, a wanker?
yeah, that's not prejudice at all eh.

2. A tendency to make ridiculous gestures while moving knobs and sliders with the intention of appearing cool (see poseur, wanker)

[estevan carlos benson]

I appreciate everyone's input. I'm going to conclude there's no real definition of controllerism. It's either about quality of performance, perceived skill of performance or perceived skill with instrument, an act of performance that shows perceived skill, an entertaining performance or a scene/culture focused on the subject of electronic music performance or skill with MIDI controllers.

I think it is unreasonable to conclude that there is no definition. Dictionaries define words based on their actual usage. It seems fair to define the word based on the community that use it (ie all of the above contributors). It appears to have two meanings:

1. Expertise in using knobs and sliders to produce musical effects
2. A tendency to make ridiculous gestures while moving knobs and sliders with the intention of appearing cool (see poseur, wanker)

Okay. Based on the responses I've gotten, I can see how those two definitions relate.

I think it's too soon to qualify anything as "expert" with these controller devices. They've evolved quickly. We don't have a sturdy understanding of the goals or relationship between the controller and the sounds. Imagine how long it's taken to define "expert" guitar playing? Although I guess expertise can be subjective and depends on what you're comparing it to. If someone making ridiculous gestures can be mistaken for an "expert", then I would say we still don't know what expert knob twiddling really is.

[friend_kami]

i'm not sure where you people got the idea that a controllerist is making riiculous gestures, but the controllerists i know, and for myself, there's no ridiculous gestures involved, just alot of button pushing, knob tweaking and taking alot of musical elements from several songs and mashing them up into something new, including resampling and retweaking the resampled audio.

surely there are some people playing around with wiimotes and shit like that but that is more a proof-of-concept thing than a musical performance if anything. most controllerists are using things like diy controllers, and matrixstyle button controllers such as the apc and the launchpad, playing around with musical fabric and wiimotes/kinects etc are not the core of controllerism, it's the exception.

instead of simply brushing controllerism off as a buzzword and assume that it's just talentless hacks doing it, perhaps you should do some research on it instead. it's a very fascinating thing especially since it merges turntablism, dj-ing and the mashup performance into one being, and the result can be very interesting and/or entertaining.

take beardieman for example, surely he's a beatboxer like no other, but he's also a controllerist and his controllers are as much a part of his performance as his beatboxing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnl1R2dU ... ure=relmfu

clearly beardyman is not a talentless hack at all.
imagine that.

take tim exile, another excellent controllerist. his controllers are the core of his entire musical being:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5SVhGg5UV8

controllerism is the evolutionary step from turntablism and is the core of liveperformance mashups.
just a buzzword indeed.

[Davo]

you sure do like prejudice, don't you?

I'm not pre-judging anything, just summarizing.

so if you are a controllerist you are, according to your definition, a wanker?
yeah, that's not prejudice at all eh.

2. A tendency to make ridiculous gestures while moving knobs and sliders with the intention of appearing cool (see poseur, wanker)

I am afraid you have misunderstood me my friend kami. The original post asked a question about the definition of a word. The responses from other posters showed me that the word is used in two ways, one is rather complimentary, the other is clearly derogatory. In summarizing these meanings I was not myself being derogatory about you, or any or all controllerists. I was only stating that some people use this word to indicate that a person is being ridiculous. I should also point out that the two meanings could be used independently of each other. That is, someone might be either an expert, OR a poseur, OR both. OK?

[estevan carlos benson]

i'm not sure where you people got the idea that a controllerist is making riiculous gestures, but the controllerists i know, and for myself, there's no ridiculous gestures involved, just alot of button pushing, knob tweaking and taking alot of musical elements from several songs and mashing them up into something new, including resampling and retweaking the resampled audio.

surely there are some people playing around with wiimotes and shit like that but that is more a proof-of-concept thing than a musical performance if anything. most controllerists are using things like diy controllers, and matrixstyle button controllers such as the apc and the launchpad, playing around with musical fabric and wiimotes/kinects etc are not the core of controllerism, it's the exception.

instead of simply brushing controllerism off as a buzzword and assume that it's just talentless hacks doing it, perhaps you should do some research on it instead. it's a very fascinating thing especially since it merges turntablism, dj-ing and the mashup performance into one being, and the result can be very interesting and/or entertaining.

take beardieman for example, surely he's a beatboxer like no other, but he's also a controllerist and his controllers are as much a part of his performance as his beatboxing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnl1R2dU ... ure=relmfu

clearly beardyman is not a talentless hack at all.
imagine that.

take tim exile, another excellent controllerist. his controllers are the core of his entire musical being:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5SVhGg5UV8

controllerism is the evolutionary step from turntablism and is the core of liveperformance mashups.
just a buzzword indeed.

I am researching it. I guess I am narrowing down the different meanings of the term. One person described it as the degree of complexity in performance. Another says it's a matter of expertise (which I would imagine is too difficult to define in this context - the term "expertise"). Another says it's more about the relationship of the controller and the sound. However "ism" as in controllerism, suggests that it's a practice or philosophy and that's what I really don't get.

It's the practice of complexity? The philosophy of expertise? A system of performance quality? The word still doesn't make sense.

[friend_kami]

i'm not sure where you people got the idea that a controllerist is making riiculous gestures, but the controllerists i know, and for myself, there's no ridiculous gestures involved, just alot of button pushing, knob tweaking and taking alot of musical elements from several songs and mashing them up into something new, including resampling and retweaking the resampled audio.

surely there are some people playing around with wiimotes and shit like that but that is more a proof-of-concept thing than a musical performance if anything. most controllerists are using things like diy controllers, and matrixstyle button controllers such as the apc and the launchpad, playing around with musical fabric and wiimotes/kinects etc are not the core of controllerism, it's the exception.

instead of simply brushing controllerism off as a buzzword and assume that it's just talentless hacks doing it, perhaps you should do some research on it instead. it's a very fascinating thing especially since it merges turntablism, dj-ing and the mashup performance into one being, and the result can be very interesting and/or entertaining.

take beardieman for example, surely he's a beatboxer like no other, but he's also a controllerist and his controllers are as much a part of his performance as his beatboxing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnl1R2dU ... ure=relmfu

clearly beardyman is not a talentless hack at all.
imagine that.

take tim exile, another excellent controllerist. his controllers are the core of his entire musical being:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5SVhGg5UV8

controllerism is the evolutionary step from turntablism and is the core of liveperformance mashups.
just a buzzword indeed.

I am researching it. I guess I am narrowing down the different meanings of the term. One person described it as the degree of complexity in performance. Another says it's a matter of expertise (which I would imagine is too difficult to define in this context - the term "expertise"). Another says it's more about the relationship of the controller and the sound. However "ism" as in controllerism, suggests that it's a practice or philosophy and that's what I really don't get.

It's the practice of complexity? The philosophy of expertise? A system of performance quality? The word still doesn't make sense.

controllerism is i supposed a philosophy. the controllerism community is tied up nicely with the diy community so there's the do-it-yourself philosophy; hacking your controllers, building new one, using them in ways they were not designed to do, much like the circuitbending community i suppose. then there's the other thing; the mashup-scene and the diy philosophy of the mashup-scene; take, say 7 songs and put them together to perform a new peice of music on-the-fly using your performance setup.

even controllerists like tim exile and beardyman does this, although they tend to use their voice as the primary instrument.
the idea is still the same; do it yourself.

the difference between a controllerist and a dj, say, is that a controllerist doesn't dj, he performs with either other peoples works and makes new derivative works based upon them, usually live, or they make new stuff on-the-fly using livelooping and similar.

[JuanSOLO]

This thread is hysterical. And I love what estevan has done with it.

Is he a forumist, or maybe a threadist? One who stirs the pot via interweb forums in ways that seem provocative to some, offensive to others, never really revealing wether or not it is a joke, or legitimate curiosity.

NICE WORK!

I'm pretty sure DJ Babu claims to have coined "Turntablist," and Moldover adapted such a term to what he thought he was doing, "Controllerism." In light of what estevan has been questioning, I will have to agree that moving the term "Controlerist" to a place to describe a way to make music, becomes a grey area, especially since "Turntablist" roots itself on a particular object inspite the use of faders on the mixer. Maybe "Controlerist" will branch out and create sub genres, APC40ist, OR Novationists - one who prefers Novation products to perform with laptops. I'm pretty sure the over 80 crowd thinks anyone who owns an iPad is a Computer Scientist, and I Imagine that makes a Controllerist look like a Wizard.

So now I am equally confused. If I am playing my guitar through the Guiatr Rig controller, and it is going through a splitter (mapped to the wah like pedal) in which one side is routed into a Reaktor Pitch tracking to midi, that goes out to an analogue synth, and the other side is going through virtual emulations of traditional guitar gear, When I rock the pedal one way, I am a guitarist, and move it to the other side, I am now a controllerist?

hmmmmm, I have so much to learn about life, and that Vespers video was dreadful.

[JuanSOLO]

a controllerist doesn't dj, he performs with either other peoples works and makes new derivative works based upon them, usually live, or they make new stuff on-the-fly using livelooping and similar.

This sounds an awful lot like remixing, which seems a lot like DJing, but what do I know.

[friend_kami]

a controllerist doesn't dj, he performs with either other peoples works and makes new derivative works based upon them, usually live, or they make new stuff on-the-fly using livelooping and similar.

This sounds an awful lot like remixing, which seems a lot like DJing, but what do I know.

exactly.
what do you know.
there's a huge difference between a remix and a completely new work based upon several peices put together, cutup, mashed up, processed, sped up, sped down, whathaveyou.. if the song is compromised of 8 different songs and the bassline, the hooks and the percussion is entirely new, far from the original of these 8 songs, is a remix then?

no it's not. it's a new peice of work.

[JuanSOLO]

Well it's no secret that I don't know anything, especially now.

[JuanSOLO]

I think it's time to go practice my breakfastist routine and get some coffee, this threads just ramping up.

[Davo]

I think it's time to go practice my breakfastist routine and get some coffee, this threads just ramping up.

Well, yes. You have the option to mash up your cornflakes, toast and eggs and make a whole new style of breakfast! But don't forget to do it with artistic flourish.