Ableton Live and TouchDesigner!

My focus for the last several months has been continuing to work on live show material. There have been many ups and downs, and the concept of a show continues to evolve.

I've switched from Reaper to Ableton Live for running things on stage. So far, the experience has been much smoother. The MIDI interface of Live is especially convenient for routing multiple devices and synthesizers with external effects, etc... All these things can be done with Reaper, but it's been much faster and more obvious to find solutions in Ableton. It feels more deliberately designed for you to use MIDI in the way I am currently exploring.

I've also started learning TouchDesigner to work on new types of motion/light to visualize synth controls. MIDI CC data can be mapped to various parameters inside TouchDesigner to modulate a visual output. The application seems very robust... and I've barely scratched the surface, but my experimenting has gone well! I hope to bring something from TouchDesigner with me to my next show.

As much as I love the idea of making physical devices that work with CV signals, working with MIDI + light/ projectors via my computer seems like a much less expensive and perhaps equally natural, obvious way to visualize the modulation of sound sources. Ultimately, I hope to use this as a way to learn/ experiment with different types of movement that I might someday translate into a physical device.

I've spent a lot of time on all of this over the last few months. Sometimes, I find myself drifting away from the point a bit. As much fun as it can be to dive into wonky technical problems, I need to remember that such problems can be as endless as they are superfluous. The goal of any live show should be to create an experience that supports and presents the music- not distracts. As much as I aspire to create something interesting and new to show, the artistic, aesthetic, and emotional experience that the totality of the work creates for the audience is what matters. The tools I create are useless (even if they technically work) if they don't mean something in the context they are used.