Floating 🌊 (Arturia Minifreak // Elektron Digitone // MFB Tanzbar // Roland S1 // K.O.-Sidekick)

video upload by 2-Minute Warning

"Four instruments, three parts played in real time, and one slightly overloaded pair of hands. 😅

The challenge for this one was simple on paper: play the PADS, BASS and LEAD in real time. No sequencers being abused here! Well… except for the MFB Tanzbär, which handles the drums. 🥁

On the MiniFreak , I use two different pad sounds: one for the first part, then a more choir-like sound for the second half.

The S-1 handles the bass, and its HOLD function was particularly useful here. It lets me keep a bass note playing while freeing one hand to do something else (change sounds, play the lead, trigger a drum break… basically trying to keep everything under control. 😅)

The Digitone is where I play the melodies, using chime sounds layered with a pad-like sound. For the outro, I switch on the arpeggiator.

And then there's the Tanzbär , which made things a little more complicated because I wanted to play with the K.O.-Sidekick effects during the performance.

I used the Tanzbär's separate outputs so that:
The main drum parts go through Sidekick Channel 1, with its compressor, EQ and Loop effect for the breaks
The hi-hats and cymbals go through Channel 2, using the compressor, EQ and Delay.

So while playing three instruments in real time, I also had to keep an eye on the drums, the Sidekick effects, sound changes and everything else happening at the same time.

Let's just say… there are a few beautiful mistakes in there. 😂

But that's the whole point of these jams: no perfect performance, just one take, a lot of things to control, and a human being trying to keep up with his own setup.

Hope you enjoy it!

As always, the performance was recorded in a single take. I mixed and mastered the individual tracks afterwards in Ableton Live, but the musical performance itself wasn't edited or fixed."