Hi, I'm Pammela Rojas, singer and visual artist of Shiro Schwarz
Shiro Schwarz is an audiovisual project inspired by 80s funk and boogie
Rafael Marfil and I started the project in 2011.
Since the beginning of our collaboration, I have been very interested in the use of technology to control visuals in real-time
The advantage of using the BeatStep is that it includes a sequencer and I can interact with it directly
Before, mi visual compositions were less dynamic
I created defined scenes and could only interact with certain elements in real-time
Now, I have more control over the elements of my composition
and the interaction with the music is more evident
What we do to have the visuals react with more precision is
to sync the BeatStep's tempo to Rafael's computer while having it connected to mine to control the visuals
I create the visuals on Quartz Composer
and it is very easy to assign MIDI messages to elements in the composition
For example, open Quartz Composer and create a new blank composition
On the left side you can find the library, on the center we have an editor,
and on the right side the parameter inspector
Now, we are going to import the objects that we need from the library,
in this case a Cube and a MIDI Receiver
By using MIDI Monitor we can know exactly which note is being sent by which pad.
If it is not the desired note, we can change it directly within the MIDI Control Center Editor
Finally, we write the​ note number, MIDI channel and the name of our MIDI controller in the MIDI Receiver object,
then we connect its output to the "Enable" input of the Cube object.
Now, each time the BeatStep sends that particular note, our cube will appear
Another advantage of using the BeatStep
is that I can save the sequences I create and switch between them to achieve a more dynamic performance
Apart from acting as a sequencer it has a controller mode that I can activate effects with,
and as the pads are very responsive, it makes it much more dynamic
We are Shiro Schwarz
