DECISIONS

The suit is working fine with the samples in Logic Pro as is pictured above with Nicola and myself. The decisions now have to be made about how to get the samples to sound good when constructed. I thought it would be a case of using effects and autotune to do this. We thought maybe that if we section each of the 128 samples into 8 (octaves) and pitched them to a major scale, using the pitch correction plug in it would solve our problem. Then have the scales ranging over 2 octaves (split the keyboard into 2 sections) and this would give us enough variation to create a song and sound melodically correct.The problem was that the result sounded too computerised, which we didn't want,.as autotune usually does when it changes notes drastically.

We started to think that it might be useful to re-record the samples. So we could do 128 replicas (1 for each sample) but within a major scale. They would all fit in to the same key then and by singing them, the result would be more tuneful. Also, some of the existing samples are quite short and quick and although we do need a contrast, i think the new samples should be more sustained to give the ear a chance to hear them clearly before jumping to the next. Another alternative, suggested by Lamberto, is to time-stretch some of the samples. When this is done over about 1/2 a second, it's unnoticeable, obviously if we stretched it for longer the result would,again, sound very computerised.
Even though we are creating new samples, the existing ones have not been useless. When we heard them by using the midi suit, we got a nice sound when the setting in Logic was on poly. This gives an overlap of each sample, rather than seperate when heard in mono. We could use these samples for an instrumental part of the song or maybe the middle eighth. If we autopitched them to the same key as the new samples, we could even use them as a backing track. The computerised sound wouldn't matter then because we are hearing a conglomeration instead of an individual sound. The movement would be quicker from the midi suit and less contrived.
The midi suit needs to be mapped so that we get a larger scope for activating the samples between joints. At the moment there are, for example, seven samples playing just from twisting one wrist. Although possible, it's extremely hard and time consuming, not to mention restricting choreography, to master what each tiny movement activates. So by re-mapping, we can transfer say those seven movements of the wrist to maybe connect to just 3 sounds. So along with making the samples longer and the midi suit less 'sensitive' we should have more room to choreograph our tune!!