Sorry Marco,
but I can see that you have never played jazz!
Ingo
Von: Marco Donnarumma [mailto:devel@thesaddj.com] Gesendet: Montag, 20. Juni 2011 13:43 An: Ingo Cc: pd-list@iem.at Betreff: Re: [PD] Pd performance at TED
Ingo, thanks for your explanation, I think to understand how he's playing.
The movement looks to me secondary - it's more like a dance movement and not too much music control.
This might be a very personal take, but if movement is secondary in gestural control, why one uses gestural control at all? I believe that effective and ancillary gestures are what reinforce our perception of an instrument as a musical tool, rather than a mere "device". Imho many gestural controllers would benefit of a better focus on this aspect. How would you play such melodic lines (like those jazz licks) - in time - simply with gestural control?
Setting an array of preset chords, triggering them with multiple switches, deploying a timeline which holds the trigger until the onset of the next beat or quarter, etc... I guess the list here could come up with many other methods. I'm not saying that's trivial, I only think that it's not the "future" as it is presented in the video. How would you improvise on scales, pattern or harmonic structures? After all he's a jazz player calling his music "beat jazz".
What do you call improvisation in this case? How much is he improvising? I can imagine he's "improvising" with the melodic lines, but playing samples and presets chords doesn't match my own definition of improvisation.
cheers, M