Interactive Musical Video System: Week 3 Update
This week I tested using in-ear monitors, new lights, mapping “Stutter Edit” to the SPD-SX, and implemented the new song setlist. To be able to hear and play along to songs well in a live setting, I decided to test using in-ear monitors. This proved to be helpful when playing along to music as the monitors stayed in my ears well and in a live setting, I will definitely be able to hear the music I am playing along to well. The sound quality of the in-ear monitors was interesting as there were not many low-end frequencies and there was a noticeable cutoff in the high-end frequencies around 16 kHz. However, this may be a good thing as in-ear monitors are meant to produce an accurate reference of music, while not exaggerating the highs or lows like many other headphones do.
The budget Neewer lights I tested worked very well as I did not even have to use their maximum brightness to achieve good results. In fact, I may have to change the white balance and color settings of my webcam to adjust to the better lighting I now have. The downside to these lights was that their USB connectors got very hot after a few hours of being on, which could be a fire hazard.
Mapping MIDI signals from the SPD-SX to Izotope’s “Stutter Edit” plug-in worked very well. Now when playing along to music on the drums, I can hit a pad on the SPD-SX and trigger many audio effects at once essentially remixing the song. Because I can only trigger one-shots when hitting the SPD-SX, I used the Note Length MIDI effects device to trigger sustained notes to “Stutter Edit.” I mapped the Length parameter to MIDI control knob 1 of the SPD-SX and a custom dry/wet macro knob of “Stutter Edit” to MIDI control knob 2 of the SPD-SX. When using this system while playing the drums it can be confusing if “Stutter Edit’s” effects are triggered for too long as the song I am playing along to keeps playing but is masked by effects. My solution to this was to make a mix knob for “Stutter Edit,” which will help as I can control how much of the song and how much of “Stutter Edit’s” effects I hear.
I downloaded my whole song setlist to MP3 and imported the songs into Ableton Live. So far, I have 24 songs with the main EDM/bass music section:
Vaporwave section:
Trip-hop section:
These MP3 files do not seem to affect Ableton Live’s CPU usage that much, but more testing will need to be done, while triggering videos, applying video effects and playing along to songs simultaneously.
