LiveScaler: Live control of the harmony of an electronic music track

Abstract: In Electronic Dance Music (EDM), many artists use DJing techniques in order to perform their own productions live. As a consequence, they do not have access during the performance to the internal structure of their tracks, and specifically to their equivalent of a partition: MIDI files. On the other hand, if an artist attempts to remix or interpret their own production live, the number of tracks that they can simultaneously control is limited without suitable software. This article introduces LiveScaler, a software that allows live control of the harmony and pitch of electronic music. A set of pitch transformations, termed affine transformations, is presented. These transformations are applied to all MIDI streams of a prepared track. A MaxMSP implementation, in conjunction with Ableton Live, is proposed. Special attention is given to control issues, mapping, and practical live experimentation in the context of EDM.