037
february 2010
ing a regular vibes or marimba in order to achieve a full dynamic range. Once you’ve found and learnt the point where you are triggering sounds at the maximum velocity (127 on the scale of 0-127), you should start to feel comfortable.
Soft samplers In order to make a sound my xylosynth needs to trigger either a sound module or, more creatively, a sampler, and I use a soft (software) sampler, running on a laptop to do this. The EXS24 in Logic Pro is really easy to use, and I either receive samples to upload from composers, or make my own by cutting up old recordings or searching out interesting sound effects. I also use soft synths in some of my work, usually Sculpture (also Logic Pro) – this is a very powerful tool, which lets you sculpt wave forms in many interesting ways.
HOW TO
which I select with foot pedals while I play. Graham Fitkin’s Chain of Command uses the voices of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld as the only sound sources, and during a performance I’ll step through eight different sets of carefully edited and processed samples.
It’s worth making sure you have plenty of RAM in your laptop (my MacBook Pro has 4GB), closing all non-associated programmes, including Airport (tweet before the gig) and if your programmes have a ‘Live’ mode, use it. This should help your laptop focus its full processing power on your music, and reduce the risk of crashes, which will leave you on stage alone and wishing there was no audience!
Counterpoint and looping
For performing I create one song containing all the various samplers, synths and vocoders I’ll need for a gig,
As a soloist I often use either a sequencer or more often a looper – see www.loopers-delight.com – to perform multilayered music, effectively playing live on top of myself. The sequencer comes