Take a Dive

VJing for Musicians

By definition, VJing involves performing and manipulating visuals as you would with music. But the dominant paradigm so far has been DJing, as indicated by the crossfader-and-filter-knobs interface on the MD-P1. In the hands of a VJ with dexterity, a good eye, and a strong rhythmic sense, DJ-style VJing can be a real art form. When you open the Motion Dive box, don’t miss the hilarious included DVD, featuring a musical number demonstrating VJ techniques martial arts-style. (“Psychedelic Butterfly No. 2,” anyone?) But what about triggering visuals, synchronized to music, when your hands are busy actually playing your instrument?

Let’s start with the easiest, most obvious solution: Use longer video and animation clips, with carefully-chosen moments to change imagery so you can take advantage of the fact that your video is live and not pre-recorded on DVD. The MD-P1 console is narrow enough to fit easily atop your keyboard or a music stand, so you can trigger these longer clips easily. Here’s how.

Pre-load your clips. Resist the temptation to touch your laptop trackpad; using the A and B assign buttons and jog wheel on the MD-P1, you can quickly navigate your library. Assign clips to the sub mix buttons for a total of six pre-loaded clips (three on each bus).

Use one-shots. DJ-style VJing uses a lot of short, repetitive loops for tightly syncing visual rhythm to musical rhythm. To focus on playing music, though, you want to trigger only a handful of videos in the course of a song — probably between about two and six. Use longer videos and you won’t need to loop them.

Cross-fade and trigger. If you’ve ever switched between sound presets or made some other quick adjustment while playing, you should be able to cross-fade and trigger a small handful of videos even in the middle of a song. You might choose just one poignant moment in the course of playing (like cross-fading to a new video at the top of the bridge).

Economize your fingers. Consider using the automatic cross-fade timing (selected with the FD 1-3 button to the left of the cross-fader) and the A/B switch button. This effectively automates the process of sliding the cross-fader, so all you have to do is hit one (large) button. For even more automation, you can use Motion Dive’s powerful macro feature, which lets you pre-record and playback a sequence of visual events. You can trigger clips and other events on top of a macro, too, so it’s possible to combine pre-sequenced videos and filters with live clips and animation.

Use MIDI. Since everything in Motion Dive is mapped to standard MIDI messages, you can use any device that sends MIDI messages on MIDI channel 1 in place of the MD-P1. Simply connect a MIDI foot controller or other device to the MIDI port of the MD-P1, and configure it to send the MIDI message you need. Consult the included Motion Dive MIDI documentation, or simply monitor the different messages via a utility like MIDI Monitor on Mac (www.snoize.com/MIDIMonitor) or MIDI-OX on Windows (www.midiox.com).

VJing from the Keyboard

An alternative strategy is to make the keyboard your primary visual instrument as well as musical instrument. In this case, you’ll mostly ignore the MD-P1 console and focus on playing your keyboard. You could keep a slim, two-octave keyboard like the Edirol PCR-M30 or M-Audio O2 handy for “playing” Motion Dive directly. Edirol would like you to use their V Link gear for controlling Motion Dive and other MIDI products, but they’ve done such a good job implementing MIDI control consistently in the program that just about any MIDI gear will work. I used an Edirol PCR-M80 keyboard and an Alesis Photon X-25 and had success with both.

With your keyboard or other MIDI instrument transmitting on MIDI channel 1, you can trigger clips and effects. Black notes on the keyboard switch between banks of clips; white notes trigger clips in the active bank. The pitch wheel controls playback position in the clip for a scratching effect. Hitting a white note repeatedly retriggers from the start of the clip for a stuttering effect.

There’s also nothing stopping you from using MIDI channel 1 to play internal sounds or transmit to a soft synth while also transmitting data to Motion Dive for visuals. This works especially well with monophonic bass lines or synth leads; banks of short clips will produce dynamic, percussive sequences of visuals as you play. The black notes will still switch banks, so if you’re not playing in modes of C, you either need to preload banks entirely with materials you like, or embrace the unpredictable nature of this approach as you bring up new banks of visuals by playing the black keys.

Another possibility is to use Motion Dive’s MIDI Note plug-in. Using events transmitted on channel 9, these Flash-based animation effects will generate live visuals based on the pitch and velocity of your playing. Play a cascade of notes, for instance, and an accompanying cascade of flowers or text might blossom on the screen. Some of the plug-ins even rotate according to pitchbend data. If you don’t want the pitch of your notes to bend, too, just set the pitchbend range of the sound you’re using to zero. If you’re a graphic designer by day and musician by night, take note that, while this isn’t documented in the program, these Macromedia Flash files in the Motion Dive folder are editable.

Keep in mind, if you’re using soft synths, you’ll probably need two laptops for maximum performance, one running visuals, and one running sound.

Grooving with Visuals

If you’re already using pre-sequenced backing tracks or clips, grooves, and other samples, you can integrate a laptop running Motion Dive into those sequences. Here are some basic ideas.

MIDI Sync. Motion Dive will sync to incoming MIDI Clock messages, so if you’re already syncing to a laptop running Ableton Live or a groove box or sampler sending MIDI clock, you can sync Motion Dive clips to that tempo. Since Motion Dive has sync controls for each bus (A and B), you can also have synced loops on one side and longer one-shots on the other.

Trigger Clips from Pads. If you’ve got an MPC or other groove box, or pads on a keyboard for triggering grooves, drum loops, and samples, simply set those devices to send notes on MIDI channel 1 to Motion Dive. Then, each time you trigger a new loop, you’ll get a new video to go with it. For instance, you could set a Roland Fantom’s pads to trigger grooves and Motion Dive video loops.

Trigger Clips from Ableton Live. A laptop running Live for backing tracks and loops combined with a second laptop running Motion Dive are a perfect combination. First, connect the Live laptop to the Motion Dive laptop via MIDI (you’ll need a MIDI interface for each laptop). Since Live’s individual clip slots currently don’t send MIDI notes, the easiest way to trigger video is to use Live’s scenes. Simply add a MIDI track for Motion Dive and route its output to the MIDI out on channel 1, then add a clip to each scene that starts with a MIDI note corresponding to the clip you want. Combined with Live’s follow actions, this is potentially a very powerful feature, especially with Motion Dive receiving MIDI clock from Live.

As the Motion Dive creators say in the DVD song on VJ technique, “Now you are a master VJ. May the visuals be with you.”