I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while and I think I’m starting to understand what it is that puts me off. Though I’m also realizing that I need to overcome this.
First, when I see somebody play like that it feels uncomfortable. Though I’m sure this is just my projection onto it, in the sense that most probably the performer is not uncomfortable, but it feels like that. Maybe it’s due to the fact that a grid controller is not giving as much tactile orientation, in the sense that you have a lot of buttons an they mostly feel the same, so finding your way without a clear visual requires a lot more muscle memory than on other instruments. Though… it’s all a matter of practising enough I guess.
Second, it fells like an awkward way to play the instrument. Because seeing somebody play like that makes it look like they are doing something unnatural. I can’t explain that better than this though. It’s mostly irrational and subconscious.
Third, I think that I’ve seen to many performances where tilting the controller was just a performative mannerism… but more about that later.
But this whole discussion made me think about it more. If you look at instruments with a longer tradition/evolution, like a guitar or a violin, you’ll notice that the instrument has actually been designed to be played in certain ways. Maybe it’s just that we’re used to seeing them played in a certain way and that makes it appear natural to our eyes, but undoubtedly many design decisions that went into the shape of the instrument are determined by how it held and played. The chin rest on the violin/viola or the rounded shape of the guitar’s body are examples of this.
Then of course nobody tells you you have to play them like that (well except if you play classical music maybe). Especially with the guitar you get all sorts of ways musicians play and hold the instrument and that’s great and exciting.
So here we are with instruments that were mostly designed to be put on a flat surface (table), that have a very recent history and little tradition in a way… and I guess we’re all trying to figure out what we can do with them, to make a performance work as a performance.
The tricky thing is that there’s a host of them, coming in different shapes and with different functionalities, and they keep changing… so it’s a big challenge.
The more I think of it, the more it is apparent to me that maybe even more than just showing which buttons we push, it’s all about how we construct our performance. Daedelus is actually a great example for this. I don’t think that just tilting the controller makes the difference (actually, I think that’s the smallest part), what really makes the difference is that in his performance gestures are closely connected to what happens in the music. The thing with electronic music is that you can go from a purely acousmatic performance (the push-play-and-walk-away type) to something where every sound is produced as a consequence to a performers gesture (as in most non-electronic music). The closer you are to the latter, the easier it is for the audience to see the connection between sound and the source of it, even if they don’t know anything about how the instrument works. I think that with performances like Daedelus’ this works well, because basically he pushes a button and something happens, and you can closely link the two in your mind.
This doesn’t work that well if you’re just triggering scenes in Ableton using a launchpad, and tilting the controller won’t make that better. Which is what I meant above with performative mannerism. Either you treat the grid as an instrument, and actually play it, or you probably be better honest about it.
This said, I think tilting the controller towards the audience is one possible way to deal with it. Though maybe other ways need to be explored as well. But now I’ll go and read that thread that was linked above… since this has probably been discussed already!
