update...

Played Ottobar last Saturday night, part of an experiment called VALIS ("vast active laptop intelligence system", apologies and a grateful head nod to pkd) where six laptop artists did experimental drum and bass-esque improvisation, attempting to sync across multiple systems. The sync was not ideal, some were MIDI connected and some were just setting metronome to the agreed upon value, where the agreement was not necessarily homogenous... hoo boy... hee ... it was fun: there were some really wonderful sounding sections, and some more disjointed messy ones, so it ran the gamut from flashes of beauty and brilliance to sonic mayhem and murk and back.

In general, as far as continuity and in-time rhythm are concerned, when multiples of us 'convene' and we go one laptop music electronicist at a time, beats/sounds are more coherent and contiguous. But as far as variety and depth and spontaneous creations are concerned, this was a very fun experiment with some really interesting and promising results, and there are plans to get this to occur monthly.

My new controller is a very interesting instrument. I have been working with it and in conjunction with Ableton Live it is very powerful. A sort of 'avant garde symphonic' sound is possible, the buttons allow me to select between synths. There is so much that the software and hardware will do for me, now that I've got a midi controller layout where I have deep familiarity with the note positions I'm thinking a lot about what I want to do with all of this. I've been fortunate enough to play in various places with people who put up with me, that's good. But I haven't really gone out with what I think is my very best at this point.