Lovely start to the tour at Roulette, with opening duo of Ikue More and Jim Staley, both friends of 30 years. I played at the original Roulette in Manhattan many many many moons ago. The new Roulette is a beautiful theater in downtown Brooklyn with an even more beautiful Meyer sound system. Was flattered to have in attendance Shelley Hirsch, Rrose, and visual artist Ector Garcia.
My first concert with the new instrument I designed for this tour, centered on the Aalto virtual synthesizer created by Randy Jones of Madrona labs. This single $99 plug-in is so powerful that I am using it as a stand-alone synthesizer. No MIDI. No effects. To play it I am using a standard gamepad and using Max to route the gamepad gestures to the synthesizer. The software is quite simple, but I have spent many long hours over many months creating a sort of gamepad topography in which the raw gamepad gestures are sculpted for the synthesizer in musically meaningful ways.
Very very nervous before the concert. This is a completely new instrument, a completely new way of playing for me. Fortunately, the concert went extremely well.
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