In Europe and jealous of the USA's Laptop Battles? Laptop-Jams
is set for this summer in London, Brighton, Glastonbury, and even
Denmark. Instead of going solo, up to three will jam simultaneously,
but no more than three at a time (unlike New York's Share party, where jams are basically unlimited).
The good news is, you can show up with a 2-octave keyboard, which is
verboten at the Laptop Battles here. And video cameras will monitor
what you're doing, so people don't just have to watch "glowing Apple
[logos] & thousand yard stares." It's all good fun — not a
competition, a la the battles.
Don't know if you meant to say Share excludes keyboards, but to clear things up, you certainly can bring any controller you want to Share– in fact you'll see at least 3 25 or 49-key keyboards at any given Share Open Jam.
Also seen at Share: a pickupified Cello running into an M-Audio box on an iBook; an electric guitar
rig; and a microphone hooked up to sampling, oscillating, and effects pedals.
You can even bring the Behringer B-Control, which, by the way, now looks awesome with Reason 3.0– when controlling the Reason Mixer, the lights on the top row of the B-Control turn in to VU meters– mesmerizing in the low-light of laptop jams. Maybe I'm turning into a 16-year old, but it's sweet! (and inspiring)
Thanks, nbarday! I was aware Share was cool with controllers, but well worth pointing out. And while I admire the 'purity' of the laptop battles, outside of the laptop-battling ring I'm all about avoiding just working on the laptop. Nothing against the laptop, mind you, but please give me some kind of controller. Even a MIDI sock puppet will do.
I'll be at Share again soon once I can escape my apartment . . . if ever you have a chance to write a book, don't. 😉 But all will be done soon.
Sweet! Would be cool to meet you in person. Only been playing a few months, but CDM is one of the top stops in my RSS aggregator.
When you do come out to Share, I'm the guy with a B-Control and an HP laptop.
Good luck on completing the book– looking forward to the "I can go out and play now!" post 🙂