Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Surface Session Ep 01 – My Surface Pro 4 setup, in-the-box, out-the-box”.
Hello, I’m Robin Vincent and welcome to this the first of my kind of off-the-cuff thrown in the air quick little videos about what I’m doing on the surface pro for so I really wanted to do today will show you what my setup is. I’M hoping to keep this more or less sort of permanently here, although I imagine the little boxes around the outside are gon na, be more or less depending how we do and, depending on how focused I am on the surface or whether I’m more focusing outside the Box, I don’t know I’m in a space of transformation. I don’t know about you. I seem to be enjoying having a lot more external hardware, particularly when I’m performing we’re being really focused into the surface or into your laptop can be good and necessary and interesting, but actually in a performance space. It’S easier to have other things around as well.
At least that’s what I’m finding so, let me take you on a little tour. So in the middle is my surface pro 4 sitting pretty there now to the left. I’Ve got this, which is the Keith McMillan K mix. Now this is fairly new to me.
I’Ve been using it a little while and I haven’t really dug into it yet, but I will do an entire review, video of it, because it’s very very interesting next to that I’ve got the Novation circuit, so something I’ve been getting to grips with. Lately. I kind of it’s got a good engine of sounds and drums within it and also is a very good hands on controls. You can turn stuff on and off. You can create patterns very quickly. You can adjust with knobs it’s a nice sort of digital technology.
Kind of box beat making groove maker thing which I’m having a bit of fun with integrating with the larger set up. Then, at the top here I’ve got on base station, which is a great little unloved. Listen, they also left the keyboard. I use it all the time for most of the things I’m entering in whatever I’m doing then. Over on this side is the new stuff, my new acquisition of the Moog and mother 32, which is a semi modular, analog synth, it’s just a beautiful thing. It has built-in little keyboard on here, has a built-in sequencer and is something that I could play with all day. This is gon na expand over here.
I’Ve been completely bitten by modular synthesis and I really want to push this side of it, but also how it interacts with the surface, because you can hear there’s a delay going on there. That delay is being caused by the computer by the surface. Not by this.
That has no echo facility in itself at all was actually like. So now this has been driven by a MIDI cable here, which is coming out of this rather ugly little box over here now. This is an expander for the K mix, which is very handy because otherwise I have no MIDI. Ins and outs has all been done on USB previous to this.
So that is a very handy, little box, which has given me the meeting out to me little Moog. Everything else is wired in through this powered USB 3 hub here. My cable management is obviously awesome, as you can see. So that is running everything else.
Now there is seemingly a problem with my harp in that whenever I plug it in it kills my wireless connection and we normally. I have wireless off anyway, when I’m making music. So it’s one of those things that can cause a glitch, but I don’t want it to be forced off. I want to be able to go and do updates and check for things while this here is still connected, but at the moment I can’t do that.
So that’s one of the things I’m gon na be looking at in one of these videos on beginning another hub in and I’m gon na try that out. Also, if this over here starts to expand into other modules and other bits and pieces, then I might need a little bit more in the way of MIDI. So you have to look at that as well. So this here is my basic set up, and this is what I’m going to try to integrate together with a surface song could be looking at things inside the box and outside the box.
How things move around what you can do with things going in going out going through? I mean I’ll. Give you a little example of what I’m talking about here. I’M using the echo, which is a multi-touch MIDI controller for Ableton Ableton, is running behind it there, with all its horribly little tiny, squeaky little buttons. Now I can use the echo controller, of which I will do a full review soon to control all sorts of different things here and control levels. I can trigger bits and pieces much more easily than I can enable in life by itself, but there are other advantages to this. I wanted just to point out on this particular occasion when you go into live. If you want to open up the GUI of a larger instrument or effect that can have a problem on your dough playback, so let’s set this playing now. I’Ve got biotech in here running deep, just bring everything else dead, so we’re just listening to biotech at the moment and I’ve only to edit that I could bring up the GUI like so, which is beautiful.
However, in Yoko, I’ve got this mapped to here. Yes, no down the bottom job, but the dieter with the echos. I can do it without bringing up the theory which can sometimes cause a glitch. So let me show you the same thing on the moon. The Moog audio output is running into the K mix and then through able to live, is coming into a channel here and on this channel I’ve got the movement plug-in, which is from output, is an awesome, delay style plug-in, which again has a wonderful kind of XY Pad type editor for it, however, when you bring that editor up, it tends to cause a bit of a dropout or a bit of a hassle. So what I can do is I’ll set this running and instead I’ve got it mapped to Y echo. So I can change the delay here without actually having to bring up the GUI at all, as I go back into live and try to bring that up. Nope there you go so has a bit of a struggle to start up, whereas I was quite happily doing that with the echo without having to bring the GUI up. Does that make sense? Am I making any sense, I’m just kind of running alright, so there you have it there’s there’s the setup. This is what I’m trying to do.
I’M wrestling with multi-touch software and wrestling with doors and user making software I’m integrating with external modular, semi, modular, analog gear and digital gear, all trying to run it from the one music-making performance and production station, and my plan is to do a lot more music here. Rather than on my desktop to do it all here – and you know, make videos like this to show you what the heck is going on, so you know that’s the plan so to play you out, I’m just going to start using this piece of music that I’ve Been working on here and in the meantime go make some choose. .