Richie is using Ableton Live and his new CTRL controller
as the front-end to Derivative's TouchMixer, which is generating
live visuals for over 25 Plastikman songs. Playing a music
loop in Ableton also automatically triggers and syncs a
visual element in TouchMixer, while volume faders and other
sliders affect details of the visual elements, like brightness
or size. This setup enables Richie to experiment with visual
combinations, which as a side effect, induces unique sonic
combinations.
The
first live performance of Plastikman material since 1995
took place on June 4, 2004 in Montreal, Canada as part of
the Mutek festival.
As
Plastikman, Richie Hawtin manipulates and controls multiple
tracks of digital and analog audio, real time generation
of a High Definition (HD) visual system, drum machines,
synthesizers, effects and lights. This combination of technological
advances is altering the course of how electronic music
can be performed live.
Hawtin
has re-sampled and re-arranged all of the Plastikman material
dating back to the first Plastikman release, Sheet One (Plus
8/Novamute) from 1993. The entire catalogue is reworked,
using a combination of classic machines and new software
to meld old and new material into unique improvised mixes.
Working in the studio, Hawtin has experimented with combinations
of classic Plastikman material from Musik (Plus 8/Novamute),
Consumed (Minus/Novamute), along with the new material from
Closer (Minus/Novamute/Paperbag).
PLASTIKMAN GEAR
Hawtin designed and built a custom MIDI controller
incorporating the features and power of 5 MIDI devices into
one. This unit, the CTRL LIVE, gives him full real-time
control over 128 parameters of audio, video, lighting, and
effects simultaneously.
Richie's
gear includes a Mac running Ableton audio, a custom-built
3D graphics and video PCs running TouchMixer from Derivative,
multiple drum machines, analog and digital synthesizers
and a host of analog and digital effects units. Hawtin mixes
all audio using two Allen & Heath 14x4x2 Mix Wizards.
|
|
|
Ableton
Live |
CTRL
LIVE |
TouchDesigner |
TOUCH
VISUALS INTERLOCKED WITH ABELTON LIVE AUDIO
In this Touch project, Richie Hawtin's rackmount
PC runs Derivative's TouchMixer visual synthesizer and a
custom-developed Touch synth containing 26 songs of Plastikman
visuals, all driven by Ableton
Live. Ableton
serves as a powerful MIDI input device for TouchMixer that
is the same interface Richie uses for performing live electronic
music.
Ableton
Live's interface looks like a spreadsheet, where each cell
can contain a sound loop of any length, and each column
is one sound channel. With 16 columns, Rich can mix 16 loops
simultaneously by clicking on different cells on the Ableton
spreadsheet or activating the loops via his CTRL control
panel.
Any
cell (sound loop) in Ableton Live will send messages to
Touch via MIDI indicating that the loop has started playing,
is repeating or has ended, so Touch can generate a visual
effect for any loop. The messages to Touch will start playing
video loops, synthetic animations, or apply effects to other
visuals that are up on screen. In this way, Ableton is used
to select and mix visual effects that are rhythm-based and
synced to the Plastikman shows.
BARNABY
MARSHALL QUIZZES DERIVATIVE FOUNDER, GREG HERMANOVIC
When
did the light bulb go on that this is radically different?
Three
days before Mutek, while we were at Richie's studio in Windsor,
we had, for the first time, Rich's new CRTL MIDI controller
hooked up to Ableton Live, and Live sending loop data to
TouchMixer via MIDI. Rich clicked on some of the loops for
Slow Poke and we saw what it looked like on screen. Then
Rich started playing with the audio sliders to see what
visual effect it had.
That's
when it started to get mad. Rich's face lit up, as did everyone
else's. Next thing we knew he was bringing in sound elements
from unrelated songs, perfectly in sync, just to see what
their visuals looked like together. Then Rich realized that
the visual compositions were guiding his musical compositions.
That
reminded me why I had been developing these software tools
for 30 years. Once we got to Mutek performance time, I saw
what a genius Richie is, as he performed some visuals with
the same minimal aesthetic reflected in his music, egging
the crowd on, bit by bit. He's a great live performer who
understands his audience and patiently delivers.
| It's
like Richie has reverse-engineered a video game and
is toying with its de-structured parts - particles,
forces, camera moves, colors, shapes, movement. |
|
This
isn't music with video tacked onto it. It's not just video
segments triggered by sections of songs. It's not even VJing
and video jamming as we have come to know it. It is a new
way of composing visuals and of composing audio.
The
music waveform isn't driving the visuals?
No, not in the way you normally think, where visualizers
like Winamp use low-mid-high frequency bands of the music
to generate envelopes that cause visual effects. That stuff
generally makes me puke. We don't use the audio signal -
it doesn't have enough useful information. We use MIDI clock
and information about the loops that are playing and add
our own interpretation on top.
So
how are Richie's visuals tied in with his music?
Each audio loop can have a visual element tied to it, coming
on when the audio loop comes on, synced to the same MIDI
clock, and affected by the loop's volume level slider or
other effects sliders.
When
developing a song's visual, we would take one of Richie's
audio loops and play it over and over with its corresponding
visual element or effect, looping in sync. We then would
have a keyframe editor on-screen in Touch to adjust the
curves that drive the effect. For example, if it's the radius
of a circle that's being affected by a loop with an emphasis
on the third beat, then you may make the curve low at the
start of a loop, rise quickly just before the third beat,
and and then drop off toward the end.
Then
we may attach the loop's volume slider to some other aspect
of the loop's visual element, like make more stuff happen
when the slider is moved up. After that, we would randomize
the visual a bit so it's never exactly the same each time
the loop plays. We watch it with other sound/visual loops
for that Plastikman song, and adjust each element further
while all the loops play.
Then
we would get some feedback from Rich where he would play
it his way, with effects and his CTRL MIDI interface. He
makes some comments and we take it from there. A nice thing
with Ableton Live with TouchMixer is that when Rich shortens,
extends, aborts, re-triggers or time warps a sound loop
while performing in Live, it keeps the visual element in
TouchMixer in lock-step.
These
songs develop interactively, and each has its own unknown
evolution. Most of the artistic vision is Rich's, with suggestions
and prototypes coming from other artists
on the team.
How
is working with Richie and techno compared to the visuals
you did for the last two Rush tours? There
are many differences and each of the artists pushes Touch
further ahead in their own way. Fortunately, what benefits
one secretly benefits the other.
Richie
is a one-man show, generating his entire show's sounds from
one rig of Ableton Live, Mixer, CTRL MIDI controller, PCs
running Touch and even lighting with strobes. Touch is controlling
more than a dozen stage lights in a synchronized fashion
via MIDI-DMX. Richie is able to sequence the physical lights
in a syncopated pattern, matching key moments in the visuals.
With
Rich we get a lot more involved in the music - his shows
are more improvised and we need to be able to handle transitions
between unknown combinations of songs, and even elements
from other songs that Rich pulls just to see what they look
like together, or hear what they sound like together. So
we break his Plastikman set down to the raw sound loops,
animating something visual to each loop that looks good
and makes visual sense with the other loops of a song. So
there is a lot of back-and-forth in the music studio.
The
Rush songs are a lot more precise and have rather unusual
time signatures and speed changes, with no MIDI clock to
follow, so we need to sync exactly to cues in the songs.
We build structures where the VJ improvises within the precise
song structure. With a rock show like Rush, we are working
a lot with the lighting director, who is operating the lighting
board through the entire show. During rehearsals we spend
plenty of time matching the stage lighting colors and movement
with our big LED screen colors and movement to the moods
and peaks of Rush's songs.
In
a way, there is a crossover in Derivative's style. Fortunately,
Rush's Geddy Lee is drawn toward more abstract visual art,
so he encourages us to set a basic loose visual theme for
a song, and make variations that play with levels, color,
long camera moves, scale, inversions and speeds during the
song. The band is pretty overwhelming already - we set out
to reinforce the underlying feelings of the band's songs.
How
has your Touch product been affected by the Plastikman project?
The MIDI syncing is tight, video streaming from disk handles
more layers. Most important, this project is a project of
large scale. Normally we have one Touch synth per song,
and being realtime, that can tax a computer on its own.
But
in the Plastikman set there are 26 songs of visuals that
need to be played in any order, with non-linear transitions
between songs. It went further - the way we designed it,
any element from any song can be played with any elements
of any other songs. It's like having a video suite with
over a hundred channels of video and effects at your disposal
in parallel. We then optimized Touch so it could play as
many elements simultaneously as possible.
How
are you hooked in with Ableton and what is their contribution?
Ableton altered Live 3 to output MIDI clock and loop start/stop/repeat
events signals as we required, which will appear in a future
version after Live 4. We're working with Ableton further
to make authoring with Live and Touch seamless.
When
can we get our hands on this new Touch technology?
New features we develop in production get into the hands
of our TouchDesigner users as quickly as possible. Being
a software company, our Touch customers are who we are ultimately
serving. Actually, Richie's whole show is performed in Touch
017, which we released in August, two months after his Mutek
show. The Plastikman framework isn't turnkey in Touch 017,
so you have to roll your own synth. Over the next few months
we will release pre-built, streamlined pieces of it.
What
are your future plans with Plastikman? More shows,
more collaboration, more innovation.
IMAGE COLLABORATORS
Touch
synthesizes real-time generative High Definition (HD) quality
moving images. The material has been developed in collaboration
with an international team of video artists, designers and
animators. Ali Mahmut Demirel, who directed the video for
Plastikman’s “Disconnect” single, based
in Ankara, Turkey shot hours of new material to be used
in Touch.
Kevin
Mchugh was producer of the show. Dave Robert (seed()) snuck
away from Side Effects to bring his feature film production
discipline to help assemble the 26-song framework of visuals.
Crush Inc, based in Toronto, designed some visuals. Honest,
based in New York City developed morphing graphics, video
images and more. Jeffers Egan developed real-time video
environments and moving images.
DERIVATIVE
VISUAL SOFTWARE
Some of the most advanced performance-software
developers have created breakthrough features in their products
for the Plastikman show. Toronto-based
Derivative (www.derivativeinc.com)
has custom-designed a real-time animation and video sequencing
environment for the Plastikman performance. Using their
Touch
software, Derivative has programmed a MIDI interface to
lock the visual effects to Ableton Live and the CTRL LIVE
control surface, and crafted a system where visual elements
to 26 songs can be mixed in any combination.
For
an interview with Richie and more pics, click on the word
LIVE at www.plastikman.com.
Prior press release here.
Join
Derivative mail list here.
|
