Kaoss Memory

The John Fox Company strikes again.  This week we tried a new electronic setup.  Using two electric guitars and the mini '80s Casio keyboard we ran our instruments through the Korg Kaoss pad that is in the EA lab, then that into Ben's sampling pedal.

This worked very well.  There are three inputs on the Kaoss pad (although only one can be played simultaneously, Ben's sampling pedal can still create textures by sampling one at a time), so it effectively acted as a mixer.  We inputted one guitar, a microphone, and the Casio.

Then the sampling pedal has two inputs, so we plugged the second guitar into that.  Now we had four sources of sound, all able to be quite effected.

For most of the time during our practice we just did free form layering, getting familiar with this new setup.  The sampling pedal was placed at Dan and Ben's feet, and I put the Kaoss pad on my knee.  Dan and Ben each took an electric guitar, I took the Casio, and we began.

The Kaoss pad can act as either a sampler, an effects module, a synthesizer, or a drum machine.  To start our layers I played the drum machine off of my Casio.  Then I hit the BPM button on the Kaoss to be the same as the Casio.  Pressing the tactile pad, I could signal various drum beats samples to play to the BPM of the Casio.  This created a very nice drum texture for our first layer, since the modern Korg drum beat contrasted so much with the Casio's drum beat.

So we continued to add layers.  Eventually I brought up an idea I had a few weeks ago to create more interaction with the class as we improvised.  I suggested that we create a deck of twenty-four cards in pairs of twelve colors.  Then put every note of the chromatic scale on each of those twelve pairs, and presto...we have Chromatic Memory game (I'm still waiting to hear back from Parker Brothers).

The game is a two player game, ages 6 and up.  The deck is strewn across a table, face down, and each player takes turns flipping any two cards.  When s/he gets a pair, that goes into his/her hand.  At that time it will be indicated to the band which note of the chromatic scale was on the pair, and the band will proceed to modulate so as to tonicize that new note.  The player goes again.  Whichever player gets the most notes by the end of the game wins!

We shall see how this works out on Tuesday.  I think there perhaps should be a third person who indicates on a piece of paper to the band what the note is.  Then it can also be looked at after the game is done to see what the order of notes was.  Wouldn't it be wild to play and coincidentally turns out to be the circle of fifths?

In closing I will leave a link to a piece of technology that I have heard of that reminded me of the Kaoss pad.  It is a tangible music device.  Bjork uses it.  Need I say more? Reactable on YouTube.