If you’re interested in audiovisual performance as well as audio, here’s an app to keep an eye on. Resolume “Avenue” 3, announced today, is a ground-up rebuild of a popular VJ app. Now, things like GPU-native video may not mean much to the musical readers of this site. But how about features like this?

• Beat-synced audio triggering alongside video – using the soundtrack inside video clips, or using separate audio files
• VST audio effects, synchronized to visual effects and controls
• MIDI and OpenSoundControl (OSC) support
• Cross-fading of audio and video
• Beat-synced loops

We’ve been playing with an early betas at the live visualist-oriented Create Digital Motion and will have detailed hands-on reports soon. In the meantime, here’s a detailed look at what’s in Resolume Avenue 3:

Resolume “Avenue” 3 Announced: The Audiovisual App to Beat? [Create Digital Motion]

You can see the results above with Missy Elliot, but naturally this could also be used with very different source material as a glitchy audiovisual experimental ambient set, or as a way of triggering videos and audio backing tracks alongside a band.

It’s not without limitations. You can’t yet use VST instruments, so you couldn’t drop a synth or sampler into your visual set and play that – at least not in the first release, due in September.

But it’s clear an audiovisual convergence is happening. You can add this to the recent debut of GrandVJ, a live visual app with a virtual MIDI keyboard in the display and “Synth Mode” for triggering, or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, the addition of VST effects support in the visual patching environment vvvv. And we’ve likewise seen interesting ways of combining Ableton Live and other music apps with live visuals, as in Momo’s tutorial for A/V cutups with Lucifer.

This is a NuVJ, my second choice MIDI controller from Numark

As a class-compliant USB MIDI device it installed fine. I loaded my VJ software of choice, Resolume, mapped the jog wheels to scratch video, and scratched.

The video went bonkers.

A couple of moments looking at the MIDI messages in MIDI-OX told me why – the Total Control jogwheels use a bizarre schema for their endless encoder messages. All the MIDI controllers I’ve encountered in the past have used the same format for endless encoders, rotating clockwise will send out a stream of, (to paraphrase the machines) “+1″ messages. Counterclockwise gives “-1″. Spin your jogwheel or knob faster, and it sends out more messages per second. The Total Control, however, changes its message depending on how fast the wheel is spinning, so an increasingly quick movement would look like “+1 +1 +2 +3 +5 +7 +7 +8″ etc. Even more bizarrely, the values seem the reverse of what they should be, so a clockwise movement gives negative values.

So I took the controller back to the store, along with my Macbook to road test any alternatives. The guys were happy to swap my Total Control for a NuVJ, whose jogwheel behaved much better when tested with Resolume. It was still backwards, but it wasn’t causing the playhead to jitter all over the place.

I should have done a little more testing though, because it turns out that all of the knobs on this device work the same way. The only piece of software which recognizes them correctly is the version of Arkaos bundled with the NuVJ. Ableton Live does an ok job with the general knobs, and the jog wheels work ok moving clockwise, but counterclockwise has the live controls snapping backwards at 5 times the speed of forward movements.

So, sadly, I’m back at the same position I was in 17 months ago, sitting with a well made and reasonably priced controller, which will require hours of hacking and re-mapping to complete simple tasks.

Is anyone else in CDMLand in a similar situation? Or better still, have been in a similar situation and discovered a quick and elegant solution?

“What midi controller should I use for VJing?” is similar to “How long should my piece of string be?”. Without knowing what you’re using the string to produce, what kind of environment the string is going to be used in and what programs the string is going to control, there isn’t really an answer. So I’m going to start with “How are the midi-controller requirements for VJing unique”, and then give you my current solution for “What midi controller should I use for VJing with Resolume, if I don’t have enough money to buy the ReACT custom Resolume controller?”.


VJing doesn’t require so much in velocity sensitivity or aftertouch, so those fully-weighted super-responsive keyboards aren’t really going to help. Piano keys work fine for triggering clips and applying effects – programs such as Arkaos have taken advantage of the proliferation of keyboard style midi controllers – but for the VJ’s traditional grid-o-clips a couple of rows of pads or a simple qwerty keyboard is a much more intuitive method of triggering source material.

The unsubtle triggering control is made up for with knobs and sliders. With each image layer requiring controls for opacity, speed and scratch (or playhead position), filter parameters, filter opacity, in point, out point… The slider and knob requirements build up quickly.

Controlling Resolume (on a budget)

Obviously if you can use a purpose-built controller such as the ReACT or Edirol’s MD-P1, but where’s the fun in that! The whole point of midi is spending weeks assigning controls and tweaking until you’ve got a finely tuned setup which is second nature to you and completely incomprehensible to anyone else so those backseat drivers in the club will have no idea what you’re doing or how you’re doing it.

I tried out Evolution/M-Audio’s UC-16 and X-session, but 16 knobs is only just enough to dip your toes into the pool of ninja fast Resolume control. I was considering a Trigger Finger (while bemoaning the prevalence of 4×4 pad controllers) when one of my bandmates picked up a Behringer BCR2000.

10 minutes with it plugged into Resolume and I was hooked. I’m fully aware of the… interesting reputation Behringer audio gear has picked up over the years. But set your prejudice aside for a moment and marvel in the hottest combination of cheap and midi control in one knob encrusted box.

32 endless rotary controllers (8 of which have push function) and 24 buttons. Over 500 LEDs. AU$265 (US$195) street.

This is a particularly attractive controller for Resolume because the 3 main groups of knobs mirror its 3 layer control scheme. Even the ReACT requires the use of shift or layer select keys to choose which layer you’re tweaking. Clip triggering is covered by a qwerty keyboard (handy hint: recent model Thinkpads have a built in LED to illuminate your keyboard in dark clubs), but most other controls can be covered with a BCR2000.

After a year of use (and several iterations of assignment tweaking) here’s my BCR setup for Resolume. This allows for extremely detailed and intuitive live control. The biggest drawbacks being:

• Scratching with a rotary encoder is never going to be as fast as a jog wheel or fader
• The magic number for opacity is 50%, this is the level at which layer modes such as Add, Darken and Lighten show both the current amd underneath layer at proper luminance while showing as much of each as the blend mode allows. It would be nice to have a “sweet spot” so exactly 50% was easier to select at 2am and 7 beers. Perhaps some of the top pushbutton rotaries could be remapped as “layer x, value 128″

Midi mapping is as personal as operating system setup or plugin selection. I expect every VJ to have their own method of control and preferred layout. There’s no way I’m going to tell you my kung foo is superior, but if you’re still VJing with a qwerty keyboard and mouse it may be time to take a little of that gig money and see how much further your style can go.