Introduction Thread

[Guitroller]

Not to be presumptuous, but I feel like this forum could use a stickied, dedicated Introduction Thread to keep things neat and tidy.

So, assuming the mods approve, I present this one.

Assuming it gets noticed, this can be the spot where any and all new members (myself included) can make their introductions to the forum.

For example:
Hi everyone, I'll go by Guitroller (see what I did there?) on this forum and I have love of music, particularly guitar-driven Post-Rock and Indie.

[Guitroller]

Don't everybody all jump at once, or anything. 

[aeriae]

Heh... it's still quiet here in general. Maybe it's just that people don't feel very introducy when the majority of posters are pretty new to the whole controllerism thing.

Anyway for folks who haven't read some other posts of mine, my name's Wade. I go by Aeriae in electronic music production. I live in Sydney. My faves amongst the kinds of music I make are Autechre, Aphex Twin and pals. I began as a studio only project but I started thinking about live performance when I got a feeling it's hard to build a fan base in a niche genre without it. But I wasn't satisfied with most ways of performing live in electronica, and definitely didn't want to make such a great effort (to perform live) without identifying one. After I saw Moldover's vid, it was the best practical presentation I'd come across for software+midi performance and it inspired me to try to adapt something like it to my pretty much non-DJ setup. So it's taken 5 months to go from nowhere in this department to having a software/hardware rig, a few songs in it ready to go, and I'm working on more.

My sites:
http://aeriae.com
http://www.myspace.com/aeriae

[Kipp]

I'll bite. I am Kipp Wieland and go simply by Kipp here at the forum. I am an artist and musician in Iowa. I have been in many many bands over the years, playing guitar, Hammond organ, and singing, but since 2000 or so I have also been involved in composing electronic music and dance tracks. About six or seven months ago I started developing our digital DJ system. I didn't know it at the time, but I was practicing this "controllerism". I  kind of fell into it, but I have developed a powerful and quite accurate system that allows us to mix between eight elements at one time using Ableton Live 7, a Novation X Station 25, a $30.00 Logitech 3D PC gamers' joystick, a set of Percussa Audio Cubes, a KP3 Kaoss pad, and a Quasimidi Raveolution 309-All WITHOUT the use of headphones! It all fits into a gym bag and is a total blast to operate. While none of its elements were literally built by me, I did use a few of these items in a totally different way than how they were intended. We can control all aspects of Ableton Live 7 externally now. I am here every day and can offer any advice on this topic you may need. I cannot stress enough, however, that if you wish to be involved with digital music set ups, you are going to have to be certain that all of the music you will be using is lined up or synchronized to the all mighty "time grid". This seems to be consistent in all programs. You just have to make sure that all your elements are beatmapped or synced up to each other. Most audio software programs have tools for doing this, but they are not flawless, so special attention should be paid to each and every measure of music you plan on using.
 

[FractalEarth]

Ouch at the last section above. I guess that really means that I have to really sit there and make sure tahty every single last beat of every single last song that I work with really has to be warped if not correctly done automatically. Bummer, I was really trying to avoid that. Haha, whatever, I'll do it. ]

Anyway, on to this Introduction thing.

I'm Claudio, 20, born in Brooklyn, live on Long Island.

I've been playin guitar for almost eight years now, singin for about just the same, and bass for about 4. I suck horribly at drums, yet can play drums on a keyboard easily. Why does any of that matter? It doesn't. Haha. I'm pretty new to Ableton still. I've had the lite version for a few years now, never really got into it simply because at the time I was already working my way through FL Studio. Realized it had it's definite draw backs, so started looking elsewhere. I stumbled upon Moldover's "Approach to Controllerism" vids and holy crap. That single moment had me tossing the idea of fl studio out the window. I wanted to go all live.  Everything done by hand on a physical surface without the use of a mouse or keyboard. So far I modified my Oxygen 8 to what Moldover has done in his MTV how to video. And have big plans on doing more modifications. But that's for another topic.

My eq at the moment goes as follows

Ableton Live 7
FL Studio 8
Reason 4

Korg Kontrol49
M- Audio Oxygen 8 Ver. 1 (Moldover Mod)
microKorg

I believe this would be more than enough for me to really get some music going, but I need to master the dam software first. -.-

[Kipp]

  I guess I shouldn't have made it sound so horrible about lining up the tracks to the time grid. There are a lot of tools that attempt to do this, but you still have to double and triple check each beat just incase. Otherwise you will discover the tracks that aren't lined up by the fact that they will be train wrecking here and there. Acid makes it easy, but I have been using that software for nine years now. If it lines up in one program though, it will line up in all of them. Ableton has "warp markers" that let you pin down sections of the track until it starts drifting out of sync - then you simply stretch to fit and pin it down again. The count is always represented by a vertical line no matter what program you are using, and once it gets lined up, it is there to stay unless you jack the warp setting up by accident or something.

[FractalEarth]

Yea, since reading that post I've just had to suck it up and started warping the crap out of as many tunes as I can bore myself doing them to.  Although a perk is that along the way I've noticed a few things here in there in tracks I hadn't realized beforehand. In the end controllerism, or anything that you really want to achieve greatness, and mastery of, you have to truly put yourself into it. It's what separates the professionals from the hobbiest.

[Kipp]

 The good thing is that you will get better and faster at warping the tracks. I think it is easier in Acid myself, but that was the first software I used and stuck with it to this day. I have upgraded to Acid Music Studio. It is only $60.00 but it's powerful and clean sounding. It has a "Beatmapper" function which lets you literally stretch the tracks to fit into the timeline. 

[FractalEarth]

Cool, I'll definitely look into it. And yea, warping has gotten much much easier. I can pick out transients with greater ease and I'm actually on warping to create new rhythms from old tracks. Something I really see a lot of potential with. Like if you're performing some track that EVERYONE knows, play it out a few times as it's original, then afterwards trigger your modded clip and boom, you're own flavor on a well known track. It will catch quite a few ears, and breathe new life into a track that people love. That alone will get a great crown reaction (well...if done tastefully, and intelligently). Everyone loves listening to their favorite songs, and if they can hear it again, only with a new twist, it's usually like rediscovering that track they love so much.

I dunno, just throwin it out there.

[Kipp]

 Yes - We have that new Coldplay song that's everywhere right now mixed into a set. That and some other familiar tunes. We have whole songs and then mix them with our own tracks too, so there are cool re-mixes this way.

[DvlsAdvct]

Hi guys
I'm Jared.

I live in Jersey City, NJ and hang in NCY a lot (cause, well, Jersey City sucks).  I'm really active on the DJ Tech Tools forum, helping people get their VCI-100's and other various gears to work with their systems.  I am just getting involved in this whole controllerism thing.  I have a full Traktor Scratch set up (2x Numark TTX's and a Korg KM-402 mixer) that are set aside right now.  I have a Remote 25SL, two padkontrols, a MIDIFighter and an Evolution UC33e for production and DJ work.  Right now I am starting to get deeper into advanced Modifier work in Traktor Pro, and once I have my new laptop in I am going to start playing around in Bomes as well for Preset switches and the like.

I mainly spin Industrial, goth and various "dark" electro tracks.  I've started experimenting with hard trance and psytrance, and I have a feeling I am going to be putting those genres together for a real progressive sounding dark dance style.  I have some mixes up at www.rubicat.com/dj_dvlsadvct and I am featured on the DJTechTools Mega Mix #1, soon to be #2, and will be finishing a DJTech Tools Underground Electronica mix featuring four DJs from around the country mainly playing Industrial Trance. :-)

I hope to find lots of help here to improve on the controllerism aspects of my set up, taking my style and technique beyond the next levels.

Enjoy!
Jared

[ashworth]

Hey All

im ashworth, im from miami and i currently do nightclub sound and lighting in miami beach. i also circuit bend for fun and do live noise performance with my bent creations ( myspace.com/audioidbentaudio ). I want to put together a more club friendly performance, moldover has inspierd me to do that.

im very familliar with audio, video, lighting and DMX, and midi control. i hope to one day incorporate this all and more into my performance. this forum has help me alot so far even though its still small, im looking forward to learning more and contributing more!

[judeson]

Crap. I made a seperate post. sorry.

Well..................hi.

[figment]

Hey urvry-body!

I'm Chris Wade, aka cDub cwade and figment, living in Minneapolis MN. I'm a percussionist (drummer) for 14 years, have delved into the world of creating electronic music since about 2002.
My goal is to incorporate live instruments (namely drums) with sequenced electronic music and manipulating the results in a live setting. It's been a very very long, tedious process to overcome the logistical hump, but I'm finally getting to a point where things are working smoothly, with much thanks to this forum and MOLDOVER!! Thank you guys!
So my setup is as follows:

Macbook Pro 2.3ghz
M-Audio profire interface
Ableton Live 7
Reaktor 5
Reason 3
Roland SPD-S drum pad/midi controller
Remote SL 25 controller
iPod Touch with iTouchMidi for another aux midi controller
Treehouse custom drumset
and lots of little shaker tinkley bang bang things....

All of my drums are routed into seperate channels in live, where I have effects living on specific channels (like delay on the snare, resonater on the kick, etc) and then the sum of all the individual drums are sent to a dedicated channel. This way I have control over the level and EQ of each drum.
I use the Roland pad to send messages to Live such as recording a new clip (drums, percussion), turning on and off groups of effects, and navigating through preset sections of the song being played.
I use the Remote SL to manipulate the sound.
I use the iPod Touch sparingly, since it has to connect via wireless in order to send midi messages. I don't trust it enough to use it heavily. However, it has a large X-Y touchpad with a few assignable buttons, as well as another program that has a matrix of assignable buttons (that can be used for almost anything).

Some of my inspiration comes from Modeselktor, DJ Shadow, Prefuse 73, RJD2, Tacteel, and a ton of other more "traditional" groups.

So that's what I'm up to! Thanks again to everybody contributing here!

Paz
fig

http://www.cwademusic.com

[virgo]

Hi,
I joined here after having stumbled upon the term "controllerism".

I have seen a lot of very impressive work.
Congratz to all of you.

I am an ordinary music producer who once in a while likes to do a few DJ gigs.
I admit that I never got around using Ableton Live, since I mainly use Logic Audio in the studio.
This is about to change thanks to Moldover.