Experiments with improvising and performing techno/dance music - ideas welcomed

[quincy]

Disclaimer - I'm using "techno" as a catch-all word for repetitive beat-oriented electronic music. I'm not a genre expert!

I've been playing around with some ideas for getting away from the keyboard and mouse and giving myself new ways to come up with ideas/loops/inspiration but also try to be able to improvise and perform using only my MIDI controller (APC40 Mk2) and not have to touch my laptop/keyboard/mouse - or at least as little as possible.

Years ago there were tutorials about grouping multiple Ableton samplers in order load in a bunch of different drum hits so that you could easily cycle through them with a controller knob. This is also very easy in Bitwig's sampler using multi-samples or by nesting multiple sampler device in a container. I then realised that you can use the same group/select idea with note devices like arpeggiators. In this way, you can use the arpeggiators much like a step sequencer so you can create a "bank" of drum patterns that you can easily cycle through, with the added flexibility of shifting the length of the pattern to get different mismatched pattern lengths and poly-metric behaviour (I apologise if I'm using the wrong terminology). You can use as many arpeggiators as you like in a note FX selector and you can embed these within a drum machine so you can have a single device/preset that is basically a self-contained drum groovebox that just needs a single MIDI clip with a 1/2/4 bar clip with long notes that "play" the arpeggiators.

The end result of all this is that you can map a few knobs on your controller to cycle though different kick/snare/hat/tom/whatever samples and also cycle through various drum patterns and mess with the lengths, change the various sample pitches, adjust volumes and amp envelopes etc all via controller and experiment until you find something you like the sound of. It takes a bit of setup in the first place and I'm still playing with different ways of layering note devices and whether to use a single drum machine container or have it on multiple tracks, but I think the principle is solid.

You can use this to generate loops (easy enough to record the audio or MIDI output) or to just perform and improvise. If you set up, for example, 30 kicks, 30 snares, 30 hats, 30 shakers, 30 claps etc and a load of different drum patterns for each element then you can get a hell of a lot of permutations without going anywhere near a mouse or keyboard. The output is, of course, a bit hit and miss and probably needs refinement but it's very easy to adjust each element and slowly zero in on something that works.

Is anybody else doing anything like this? I'll try to share a preset once I've had a bit more time to develop the concept.

[brunomolteni]

https://www.audiobombs.com/items/1250/% ... ector-rack

that's what you're looking for

[quincy]

https://www.audiobombs.com/items/1250/% ... ector-rack

that's what you're looking for

Thanks for the link. I have to say that looks more complex than mine. It’s easy to use a single Bitwig sampler and cycle through multiple samples so you don’t need to layer multiple devices.

My idea is also about the patterns and the ability to tweak them and experiment just by twisting knobs in my controller. The note generation, modification and container devices in Bitwig are quite powerful and if you layer things up and use macro controls to select different arp patterns and mess with pattern length etc you can get a lot of rhythmic variety without having to program any notes in the traditional way.

I guess it’s an acorn of an idea that needs some more work!