Live Looping Electronic Music Performance with MIDI Hardware

McKegg, Matt

Title:

Live Looping Electronic Music Performance with MIDI Hardware

dc.contributor.author	McKegg, Matt
dc.contributor.corporatename	Loop Drop	en_US
dc.date.accessioned	2016-03-22T18:29:12Z
dc.date.available	2016-03-22T18:29:12Z
dc.date.issued	2016-04
dc.description	Presented at the 2nd Web Audio Conference (WAC), April 4-6, 2016, Atlanta, Georgia.	en_US
dc.description.abstract	I have spent much of the last three years building a Web Audio based desktop application for live electronic music performance called Loop Drop. It was inspired by my own frustration with existing tools for live performance. I wanted a tool that would give me, as a performer, the level of control and expression desired but still feel like playing a musical instrument instead of programming a computer. My application was built using web technologies such as JavaScript and HTML5, leveraging existing experience as a web developer and providing an excellent workflow for quick prototyping and user interface design. In combination with Electron, a single developer can build a desktop audio application very efficiently. Loop Drop uses Web MIDI to interface with hardware such as Novation Launchpad. The software allows creation of sounds using synthesis and sampling, and arranges these into “chunks” which may be placed in any configuration across the midi controller’s button grid. These sounds may be triggered directly, or played quantised to the current tempo at a given rate using “beat repeat”. Everything the performer plays is collected in a buffer that at any time may be turned into a loop. This allows the performer to avoid recording anxiety — a common problem with most live looping systems. They can jam out ideas, then once happy with the sequence, press the loop button to lock it in. In my performance, I will use Loop Drop in conjunction with multiple Novation Launchpad midi controllers, to improvise 15 minutes of electronic music using sounds that I have organised ahead of time. The user interface will be visible to the audience as a projection. I will also be demonstrating the power of hosting Web Audio in Electron by interfacing with an external LED array connected over Serial Peripheral Interface Bus (SPI) to be used as an audio visualiser light show.	en_US
dc.embargo.terms	null	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	McKegg, M. "Live Looping Electronic Music Performance with MIDI Hardware" (ABSTRACT). In Jason Freeman, Alexander Lerch, Matthew Paradis (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd Web Audio Conference (WAC-2016), Atlanta, 2016. ISBN: 978-0-692-61973-5	en_US
dc.identifier.isbn	978-0-692-61973-5
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1853/54638
dc.publisher	Georgia Institute of Technology	en_US
dc.relation.ispartofseries	Web Audio Conference ; 2016
dc.rights	Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subject	Web audio	en_US
dc.subject	Performance	en_US
dc.subject	Live looping	en_US
dc.title	Live Looping Electronic Music Performance with MIDI Hardware	en_US
dc.type	Text
dc.type	Moving Image
dc.type.genre	Abstract
dc.type.genre	Proceedings
dc.type.genre	Presentation
dspace.entity.type	Publication
local.contributor.corporatename	School of Music
local.contributor.corporatename	College of Design
local.relation.ispartofseries	Web Audio Conference
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