Ableton Forum

set up midi controllers all over a venue (light detectors, motion detectors, anything that
can be changed into controller data)...

then wire them all into live and map them to loops and parameters...

then hit the space bar and let the venue play itself...


i think that would be amazing.


now to get 100 different midi controllers.

I have a setup like that in the works for my live show...basically setting up small controllers, mostly made with doepfer stuff, and assigning them to control non-essential audio details, and video stuff. I also currently bring along a USB controller for video control by interested audience members.

-Computo

Very nice!

This has been mentioned somewhere before... but this is certianly an appropriate thread to bring it back up.

Several of the popular game consoles have various versions of Dance Dance Revolution type games, and therefore have the floor-mat controllers to go along with them. These can be had fairly cheap, along with the playstation 2 to USB or XBOX to USB converter. This could then be used to output keystrokes to Live.

heres a cheap one:

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?s ... caid=17379

I would reccomend reapainting it, and bonding it to a hard backing (plywood would work fine) as they dont seem to want to stay flat.

Several of these at the front of the stage could allow for a great deal of interactivity, that would not result in the all to common "person moving the SAME FADER up and down and up and down and up and down..." that can easily occur with other kinds of MIDI controll in the hands of the unknowledgeable/unexperienced (Ive seen it happen!! )

Probably should be said that people have been doing things like this for decades . . . it's part instillation art, part performance art . . . Long ago i heard about a guy who hooked midi up to, essentially bunson burners which in turn heated air which in turn blew through tubes causing sound . . . Here in Minnesota we have a science museum with a staircase that, as you take steps, it triggers a scale . . . fun stuff

Just remembered, in these forums a few weeks ago someone posted a link to an algorithmic music composition setup, that was operated by hampsters crawling around

If I can pipe in here...

I tried this in a jam session - I gave other musicians control over some of my sound using my Akai MPD-16.

What I did was I set up a bunch of non-core elements of my music (percussion riffs, etc) and then mapped them to the 16 pads.

I put all 16 samples in RAM mode, and in Legato mode and set the clip quantize to quarter or half notes. Then, all they had to do was slap a pad, and they could change a non-core element of the track (within the 16 I had pre-selected).

Actually, I used 15 pads, and the 16th was set to the "Rearrange probability" on a Supatrigga covering their beats. I would recommend you NOT do this, as they kept it on all the time and it got quite annoying.

In this case, I let them play with latin / brazillian percussion - but you could make it work with pads, sound effects, or anything.

I would also not recommend you let the audience touch an MPD-16, they're expensive. Give 'em a simple $29.00 QWERTY keyboard and map 26 samples for 'em - and PULL OFF THE SPACEBAR!!!

heh.

I like the idea of footpads too... Ultimately, you DO NOT want to give your audience control over your principal rythm elements, your bassline, nor your hooks. Additionally, you don't want to give your audience ANY control over effects or levels - that's just asking for distortion, there's always some idiot who wants to pump the levels.

The other advantage of using Legato mode is that no matter how drunk your audience member is, he / she will ALWAYS be in time thanks to the clip quantization.

I heard about a house that can be completely automated using Midi messages and shit. THAT SOUNDS CRAZY!

Someone (I think it was Todd Rungren) made a Midi-Ball once.
You've seen people bouncing a beach ball over their heads at stadium concerts, right? Well, this one had a shitty wirless mic inside of it and each time the ball got a good smack from the crowd, it would trigger a different sound effect booming out over the PA system.

Think of all the cool mind games you could get into teasing the crowd once they caught on... "what sound fx will come up next..." etc etc

Fookin brilliant!!