“We are in one of those moments when the Cosmo, one of the monikers behind which David Bowie hides, tries to communicate that it is time to change. The pestiferous wave that has decimated, in recent months, almost all the giants of music is perhaps only comparable to the devastation that occurred in 1994, the year in which Kurt Cobain left us and with him every possibility that the guitars were a spit in the face of the system instead of a flash mob. "
taken from
https://noisey.vice.com
Introduction
Well let's face it: electric guitars have definitely lost the revolutionary charm of the past, and today that little bit of anger that still pervades the fiery souls of young musicians can only be found in the electronics of notebook and in binary code of the Plugin latest. The productions of recent years now seem to draw exclusively on the world of beat and rhymes rapped, glitch and drones, and from that of all derivations of the dubstep more extreme.
However, there is also another trend that is spreading in the subsoil of new electronics, and it is the presence in the setup of the musician / producer (now it makes little sense to say exclusively musician) of at least one analog synthesizer, maybe modulate, whether it's a thick vintage or a new concept project.
The important thing is that it sounds analog like no virtual and that it offers the possibility of intervening in real time on as many sound generation parameters as possible! So, if in the studio we rely on the now increasingly simple and affordable DAW with their editing versatility and the infinite availability of automation, on stage all this desire to demonstrate how wrong the world is and completely to change how do we represent it? How do we give voice to our virtual and / or analog instruments without everything transforming into the pressure of a big key Playback and that the show goes on on its own without actors and without technicians?
Ladies and Gentlemen Welcome to the Controller Era !!!
For those like me who have been dedicated to the production of electronic music for quite some time now, attention to the evolution of the controller market has always been a priority, and there has been no shortage of news in recent years: in addition to sliders, wheels, keys and pads, touch screens, electromagnetic field generators and an infinite number of custom experiences have arrived between self-built gadgets and the reuse of consumer electronics objects (gamepads of different video game consoles, joystick-trackballs, old junk for PC, etc.).
The mysterious object
But the controller I'm going to talk about in this article has a surprisingly new and never-before-seen concept. The incipit on the producer's website perfectly conveys the idea: “Keep in touch with your music! Through a thin wooden skin, which offers all the depth of an acoustic instrument, the direct connection between your mind and your sound is completely within reach. "
Contact therefore becomes a fundamental element for the search for the right feeling between man and machine and for this reason it must be as pleasant as possible, precisely to allow a fluid and instantaneous transmission of the sound impulses imagined by our mind to the timbre capabilities of the instrument that we have to stimulate. .
In this sense we can say that the nature of this controller is in perfect harmony with the scenario we are imagining, indeed it seems to be precisely the connecting element between the world of synthesizers (virtual or analogue) and the articulated performance, designed for overcome the barrier of obsolete black and white keys.
And in fact, just to confirm what I just said, I found some notes on the internet that describe the device as follows: "The project that started the transalpine brand originated a few years ago in a research laboratory in Paris. and the initial goal was to understand what the key principle of the historical instrument's behavior was ondes martenot (designed with exactly the same intent to facilitate the life of the musicians of the time by overcoming the technicalities, leaving the interpretation more free and easy, Ed) in order to then be able to reproduce the same expressiveness with new technologies. " Obviously the reference to the Martenot is relative to the left side of the historical instrument, that is the one that allowed to impress the so-called timbral articulation: “The world of timbre, of attack modes, of dynamic variations, of articular accentuations, of agogic pressures, of texture, of phrasing, in a word of the“ quality ”of sound, presents itself at once complex and elusive. (Sergio Lanza - The concept of ornament in music, tensions and extensions) ".
To better understand what we are talking about, try searching using keywords martenot e Radiohead.
After all this talk, let's finally get a closer look at ours Touch, produced by the French Expressive E and distributed in Italy by Midiware.
The shape of this controller vaguely resembles that of a pedal, even if it is not contemplated (at least according to the manufacturer ...) the use of the device through the extremity of the lower limbs. A tilting elliptical-shaped wooden platform, installed on a solid square rubber base slightly larger than the platform itself and further extended towards the bottom, in an additional area where there is a wheel of abundant diameter and thickness and two frets with a design stolen from a giant 90s computer mouse.
The movement of the platform can take place on the four axes, and all four sensors are equipped with force feedback with adjustable sensitivity. If you are thinking about a new version of the wavestationian memory joystick, know that you are definitely out of the way: to achieve all the movements that can be drawn with Touché, a composition of different controllers would be necessary, starting from the fact that, unlike a any Joystick (even the famous modulation of the Roland house), it is possible to impart movement on at least three axes at the same time (by pressing the platform in the center and tilting it to one side). But the real strength of the instrument lies in the sensitivity to the touch, since the wooden platform responds to every slightest solicitation, making it possible to use it with various manipulation techniques, from the typical touch of wanting to cause a shiver on the skin, up to to the sadistic beatings of those who prefer to inflict sensations bordering on pain.
And in fact, precisely because of this extreme sensitivity to movements, watching some demonstration videos on the manufacturer's website, it may even seem that the platform functions as a sort of touch surface, while instead it is a very simple piece of finely worked wood. What allows the generation and sending of different signals to the outside is the extreme sensitivity to the slightest vibration of the underlying rollers. This leads to the illusion that by touching different points on the surface it is possible to send messages of a different nature (in some videos it may seem that the position of the touch affects the pitch of the note), while instead the reality is that, by changing the point in which you touch the instrument, by the principle of levers, changes the depth of the excursion of the underlying mechanism, simply generating a message with a more or less deep scale value.
The messages that can be generated by the Touché can be normal MIDI Control Changes (via MIDI port or via USB) or CV / Gate out (there are obviously four outputs and four different voltage ranges). In my opinion, what makes this device particularly attractive is precisely the possibility of being perfectly integrated into an analog setup, starting with the design that has a slightly vintage trend (wood seems to be the obsession of analog synth enthusiasts). We know well that there has been a great return of interest, both from producers and consumers, towards analog synthesizers (also modular), first with the spasmodic search for vintage and then with the abundant production of analog instruments. completely new, re-designed by leading brands in the 70s-80s (eg. Moog, Prophet) or by shrewd younger entrepreneurs (eg. Arthur, Novation). What better occasion, then, to enrich this new analog dawn with a sophisticated unexpected, a warm surprise effect perfectly camouflaged in the tube and transistor circuitry, a magical accident capable of updating this dying electronic scene of musicians trapped in the digital coils of their plugins?
How to install and configure Touché
Obviously the device is equipped with a dedicated configuration software, called bound, while no driver is needed to allow the hardware to be recognized by the operating system (at the time of this writing, Lié was only available for Mac OS from version 10.10 up while now the version for Windows 10 64 bit, definitely a great step forward).
In the download section of the site, in addition to Lié and user manual, there are a series of presets for hardware and software synthesizers and in addition a lite version of UVI Workstation with a generous amount of sounds expressly programmed for use with Touchè. This last addon is a real blessing, as it allows us to immediately get in tune with the instrument, avoiding the classic drop in enthusiasm due to the study of the Control Change assignment system to the synths with which we intend to try Touché. The quantity of programmed sounds is vast and equally distributed among all types of synthetic sounds.
bound it is not a stand-alone program but a plugin in VST/AU. Consequently, it is necessary to use a DAW even if we simply have to program Touché to drive Hardware synthesizers. Once loaded bound in an instrument slot of any DAW, at the first start all the plugins present in the system are scanned to allow them to be loaded into it (attention, the recognized plugins are only those of the instrument type and not those of the fx type, and exclusively in VST - no support for AU and AAX formats nor for VST2 and VST3). From this moment it is possible either to use the presets supplied by the manufacturer or to work directly on the editing system for assigning and storing the Touché settings. I must say that, despite the not very comfortable interface at the first approach, the assignment of the controller sensors (promptly reproduced graphically by the software) to the parameters of the virtual instruments to be controlled is extremely intuitive and simple: in fact, just select the motion sensor in Lié , switch on the graphic interface of the vst-i and select with the mouse the parameter to be controlled. With the same simplicity, it is possible to assign MIDI Control Change and / or CV / Gate Out signals to the controller movements to be sent to our hardware synthesizers. For the management of the hardware synths, there are 24 memory slots, 6 banks of 4 presets, which can be recalled using the wheel and the two keys I mentioned earlier. The four LEDs positioned around the wheel can light up in six different colors, managing to indicate the selected bank / preset.
Il with and firmware of the tool are constantly evolving and during the trial period I made several updates of both. In particular, following a device block after connecting to a non-powered USB hub, the manufacturer's technical support gave me precise and timely directives on how to recover by means of a firmware flash update (which among the various improvements also included the resolution of this obviously known problem). I have interpreted the attention of the technical support towards the customer in a very positive way, as it is a clear sign of interest in developing this young project by pushing it to the maximum of its possibilities.
How can you use Touché
As a non-lover of analog synthesis (I've never owned an analog synth) I am unable to tell you about the extraordinary adventures of prog-rock solos enriched with the expressiveness conferred by Touché. Furthermore, I don't particularly like solos and music based on amazing instrumental techniques, therefore, beyond some purely technical experiment with a digital hardware synth (just to verify the correct functioning of the MIDI ports), I tried to delve into what could be the experience with Touché directly within my way of conceiving music.
Having a Yamaha available AN1x, a virtual analog of a few decades ago, I created, without particular difficulty, a preset with the Lié software to control various parameters of the synthesis chain of the instrument. Very interesting is the way in which it is possible to interact even with simple assignments such as filter, pitch and vibrato control. The depth of excursion of the movements made possible by Touché is not reproducible with any of the controllers that I have happened to use so far (including the ribbon controller present on the AN1x). Accuracy in slow envelopes and rapid return to neutral are the strengths of this extraordinary instrument. Definitely satisfying to use with the micro-sequences generated by an arpeggiator (internal in the case of the AN1x), which gives the sensation of intervention on every single step of the pattern almost as if the emission of the note depended on the touch of the fingers on the surface of the controller. I am sure that a setup, where the four CV / Gate connections converge in four respective (and respectable) inputs of a wooden box, can easily boast a pennant, a badge of merit for the high generosity of emotions released in Live!
In my humblest world, made up exclusively of plugins and degenerations, however, I veered towards a decidedly more experimental and contemporary use. Having worked a lot, on my latest productions, with The Mouth e The finger (tools for NI Reaktor 5) and with Break Tweaker of the iZotope, I wanted to try to overcome the control of the pure and simple chromatic scale in synthetic aroma, preferring to have in my hands the control of vocal synthesis and beat manipulation parameters: breaking the tempo of a groove and then bringing it back, with a slight movement of the fingers, to its regular gait, or make it fearless and hopping, sometimes annoying; approach with index finger and thumb a male and a female vocal characteristic, as in a voluptuous clandestine search for two souls rolling to the point of contact, capitulating immediately afterwards in a new escape towards an incurable rupture ... Here, this is the sense of control that I want to have on my bad sounds, on my abominable noises, on my way of expressing the annoyance I feel towards our sparkling pop productions all adorned with sequins.
Conclusions
Expressive E with the Touché controller has actually managed to produce something that did not exist before, an instrument that can find space both in the setup of the pure musician, with playing technique, and in that of the most avant-garde producer, capable of generating sound scenarios that they surpass the classical musical notation. In both cases this tool offers unprecedented opportunities for control, in a concept that is proposed in perfect harmony with the posthumanist current of thought, where humanity comes into contact with a technology capable of adapting to the human body. Precisely by virtue of this last consideration of mine, I would have preferred (but clearly we are trespassing on personal taste) a design with a less vintage flavor, avoiding wood and paying more attention to the scenic aspect of the object, perhaps focusing on transparent plastic materials with a backlight capable of enhancing the human-machine interaction on stage.
After Launchpad by Novation, which a decade ago revolutionized the way of playing live clips (clips), Touché could serve as a reference to enrich this type of performance, or aim to define a completely new way of interpreting rhythmic-melodic sequences on stage.
Software Presets
Hardware Presets
Useful news
Model: Touché
Prezzo di Vendita: 399 euros
Official website: www.expressivee.com
Italian distributor: Midiware
Photography: Antonella Panella Copyright AgeofAudio
Good music everyone!
