Book of Sounds Etude 1 (2023) by Brandon Goff (1973) – Controlling dynamics and splitting the keyboard

This piece uses samples of female voice phoneme combinations (do, da, doo, mo, ma, moo, to, ta, too) which are mapped to velocity in Ableton. (MIDI: Volume=Velocity) As the performer plays from the softest dynamic to the loudest, the phonemes change accordingly.  While playing this steady string of sixteenth-notes with accents, there is an accompaniment of long dyads which are sustained with a pedal.  The goal of this Etude is to be able to practice and control how hard one strikes the pads of the keyboard to develop a better control of dynamics. This is a very tricky thing on a MIDI-mallet instrument and requires practice. With MIDI, one can receive either live or recorded feedback as to what dynamic and pitch one is playing.