One of the most important features of our controllers is the combination buttons with corresponding knobs and sliders. There has been a rash of “grid” controllers in the past few years, and a lot of coverage of what you can do with the buttons, and very little about what you can do with the knobs and sliders. The grid works great for triggering events, controlling sequences, and finding new melodies, but without analog control, the feeling is not in the performance. Imagine a guitarist playing without strumming or bending a string! The combination of selecting, manipulating, and expressing is the soul of performance, so don’t overlook it. If you don’t believe me, check out Moldover “
jamming” electronically.
When I got into building digital instruments, I always had a mix of buttons, faders, knobs, and joysticks, with the intention of playing them all at once. I used a variety of softwares from Max/MSP, Union, nuendo, and eventually Live. Our instruments are designed with the idea that you will create relationships between the controls to come up with an expressive way of performing. Whether you are using Reason, Traktor, or Arkaos, it is important to not forget the relationship between the button and knob. Buttons can make something live, knobs and sliders can make it alive: mix, filter, garble, glitch, shift, expand, contract, and sweep. It’s true for audio, video, and even lighting.
There are many good examples of this out there. Hitoritori’s
Renoise videos illustrate the instrumental potential of knobs and sliders. Pete’s remote map for
Reason is a good one, he utilizes all of the controls on the Ohm64. And our
Builder series lets you create controllers with all analog controls (up to 64 per brain), check out Fox’s controller on our
forum. We have a lot planned for the future in regards to analog controls and what you can do with our controllers to “think outside the grid”, so stay tuned…
Knob image courtesy of bdu under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license
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news by Jay
