Footage by Hayoung Hwang – IAC and Loop setup

is a loop-based pop music piece which requires the performer to turn on and off loops during the piece. This would be relatively easy to do while playing a keyboard with hands, but it poses a bit of a challenge to someone holding mallets. For this etude, we utilized the IAC (Inter Application Control) Driver to send commands to Ableton to do this (e.g. any of Elise Trouw‘s excellent YouTube performances). This protocol was developed by Apple to communicate between its different MIDI applications. Inter Application Control is also possible to implement on a PC computer. In Ableton, this IAC virtual midi command set selects the instrument, turns on the recording function, allows it to play back, turns off the recording and then selects the next instrument to be played in realtime.