The second piece of it is turning the sketch into something performable. I used to like to just sit back and watch all of my automation and parts fly by on the sequencer, but these days it’s so much more fun to get in it and work with it on the fly. After much, much buying and selling and playing around with different control surfaces, I’ve settled on primarily a 128 grid system that I’ve customized to control both the arrangement and live effects, with the addition of small, flexible controllers that focus on mixing, percussion, and note entry. Using a customized Ableton Live template, I have a setup that gives me a static set of intuitive controls while allowing me to fly compositions and parts in and out at will, and for the most part, disconnect from the computer screen and just focus on manipulating the music through the control surfaces.

This is a sketch that I came up with in the winter of ’09 while at a beach house with the family. I have played through this song a bunch of times with a sort of loose idea of dynamic direction and arrangement that allows me to experiment and self-correct as I play the song, but for the most part, this is a one take.