[MUSIC]

I'm back in Live School with Adam Maggs, the founder of Live School and

also the Ableton brand manager for Australia.

And we're looking at the kind of devices that DJ's, producers,

composers can use nowadays to to both perform and compose all at once.

We're at Liveschool and

I'm surrounded by gear, only 2 of them are instruments if you don't count the laptop.

This is a synthesizer, this is a drum machine and actually laptop

these days actually is an instrument and we'll get to that in a little bit.

What I want to talk about is all the rest of this gear here and

these are MIDI controllers.

Really what we're going to want to cover is how you can use these types

of control surfaces to add expression to performances and composition.

So, I'll move through these fairly quickly because some of them are quite obvious,

but basically it all started from a piano. A real piano has the analogy for

how to make something like this synthesizer work.

A piano has a cabinet full of strings and hammers and that's where the sound

happens, but on the front of the piano, it is where the humans get involved,

triggering the piano notes to make all the sound happen inside the cabinet.

When we got to synthesizers that could make brand new types of

sound we needed a human input controller [SOUND] for pitch, and

also control sliders [SOUND] to add expression and this kind of stuff.

Now just focusing on the keyboard side of things, these are just messages.

[MUSIC]

To say stop and start and which pitch.

[MUSIC]

But you've also got this little trick here which is a pitch bend.

[MUSIC]

Or a mod wheel. [MUSIC]

Over to here, this is a digital version of the same kind of thing,

Now this could be used to control this synth or it can be connected to control

multiple synths to control them all at once, or one at a time but

right now this is connected to my laptop which has a piano instrument in it.

[MUSIC]

We've got, again, on and off and we've got what pitch and

we've got these continuous controllers that are sending out

a constant stream of values of pitch or other parameters here.

Pretty much everything is based on that concept of buttons and

sliders, you can see this one here which is exactly the same stuff, but

the drummers didn't like using this.

It's not a very good action for percussion, so

this is set up with pads and also some sliders and dials, but

the pads are the main point. It's about being comfortable for drumming.

But you'll notice if I strike this.

[MUSIC]

These are just notes just like this.

Normally, I'd assign this in the computer to be controlling a drum kit instead.

So moving on from that stuff, we've got a whole board of sliders and dials.

So these are all continuous controllers, you can see these sliders also known as

faders and cross faders that are sending out continuous streams of message,

so good for volumes, hands, filtering, EQs, that kind of stuff.

Plus a bunch of buttons which in this case is set up to turn things on and

off in the software giving you mutes and solos and that kind of stuff.

But again it's all the same stuff I've set this one up deliberately to prove a point.

[MUSIC]

This whole thing isn't really here to play the piano, it's here to be a mixer or

to emulate the control of the mixer but they are all the same message types.

So far we've looked at controllers that kind of represent something in the real

world, pianos, drummers, mixing desk, that kind of stuff.

But moving on to this kind of controller,

we're actually in territory that is not based on physical, real world things, but

it's more giving you physical access to what the computer can do,

things that weren't previously available in the real world.

So, what we have here, if you looked inside the software is,

we have whole bunch of clips here.

Something on track one, there's five of them, there's three on track two.

These little rectangles are called clips and

they can contain single phrases, single hits, loops or

whole songs. I can trigger them with these play buttons.

But on the controller, you can see that it's representing

that in controller form, but also

giving us the ability to change and operate it from here.

[MUSIC]

Coming over to Ableton's Push device, this is the same thing but

just so much more advanced, this is probably the most advanced

coupling of hardware interface and software out there at the moment.

So starting off from familiar territory you've got the same clips here and

I can trigger those.

[MUSIC].

And you can see at the top on the screen here, I've got a mixer.

[MUSIC]

To show you how this works, I'll start with a fresh sound,

something familiar, here's a piano, and here we are in note mode.

[MUSIC]

And I can also change the scale, instead of a major scale,

[MUSIC]

I can switch to minor, but you will notice that nothing here changes.

[MUSIC]

Making it really easy to remember and learn how to play.

Now, you can see that this is obviously not a piano layout,

this is called an isomorphic layout, and I can also show it in chromatic mode,

[MUSIC]

Or play the non scale degrees. So lit keys are in scale and dark keys,

or non lit keys, are are outside of the scale but still accessible.

If I change to major you'll see the patterns change so

it tells you where to place your fingers.

[MUSIC]

But back into in key mode, one of the other benefits apart

from learning scales very easily is chords are really easy.

[MUSIC]

Major scale or minor scale.

[MUSIC]

Aside from playing notes, I can go over to a different instrument and play drums.

[MUSIC]

Now what this can do is either playing,

[MUSIC]

or step sequencing, which if I just select a sound, I get this up here,

has a bunch of steps that are going to be represented by a timeline.

[MUSIC]

So you can see this green playhead,

you're seeing where we are in the timeline.

If I select a snare drum, I can input snare hits on all those steps.

[MUSIC]

Or I might select a percussion instrument and record something here.

[MUSIC]

I can quantize my timing.

[MUSIC]

Either completely quantized or just move it a little bit more in time.

[MUSIC]

But one of the cool things about all of this is the ability to add expression

while you're playing and while you're recording.

So if I take, I'll do the high hats, and what I might do with the high hats is,

instead of playing or step sequencing, I might just put repeat mode on.

[MUSIC]

And as I'm doing this, I'll record that and some parameter movements.

[MUSIC]

There, recording.

[MUSIC]

Where we are now with the controllers is we've moved on from this era where

you've got these physical representations of real world things, and

you might need a whole bunch of these different devices to just input notes and

control messages to the computer.

Now, you've got a system that is completely designed from the ground up so

that you can compose and perform without needing to go into the laptop.

Everything happens here,

it does everything that all of these do, plus some more things.

And then your final production processes can happen in the software.

Underneath this video, I've provided some links to performances using some

of these kind of instruments so you can have a look at exactly what's possible.

[MUSIC]

Modern Music Making

The Place of Music in 21st Century Education

Meet the Instructors