Every year at Movement is essentially an electronic music marathon starting and ending in Detroit requiring an analogous amount of of stamina, getting you just as sweaty, and insisting you employ a similar degree of pacing not to burn out too early. One aspect that does evolve from year to year is the particular incarnation of technology that performers rely upon to share their unique perspective of what’s exciting about contemporary electronic music. Early years featured performers who relied on analog methods of delivering digital music, namely turntables and records. As time progressed so did the tools, becoming increasingly digital with methods for controlling the signal evolving into forms with both a traditional appearance and ones that prominently rely on software and interfaces only marginal back in 2000.

On the traditional appearance front, digital djing with control vinyl was very much in play, although Traktor Scratch seemed to be moving in on what was previously the territory of Serato, as demonstrated by artists like Magda, Joel Mull, and Richie Hawtin. Hawtin also created a mega-mixer featuring an x:one 92 flanked by two x:one D1s—a traditional mixer and two MIDI controllers in mixer form. Overwhelmingly, when laptops were being used for DJ sets or live Pas, the software of choice was Ableton Live, more times than not accompanied by an M-Audio UC-33 (or in its earlier incarnation for early adopters—the Evolution UC-33). It’s easy to see why the UC-33 has remained popular. Presets are available for download from M-Audio for both Mac and PC with . There are two banks within the presets, the first one controlling volume and pan on the eight tracks and the second one controls this for the first 6 tracks and the first send, and then controls the cross fader, monitor level, master pan and the tempo on controllers 8, 16, 24 and 32.

However, an even slicker and more advanced MIDI controller solution for either Scratch or Live would be the new Nocturn by Novation that I raved about after this year’s winter NAMM. If you’re not dead set on faders and can get by with knobs, the Nocturn has quote a few features that make your life easier. For one, there’s no need to download templates—the Nocturn’s Automap feature detects what program you’re working with and assigns parameters to each knob automatically. And if you’re not happy with the preset values you can easily change them by touching the knob and adjusting it through an on-screen overlay display. It’s much faster and easier than navigating the UC-33’s menus.

In terms of portability for live dance music performance digitally, both the UC-33 and Nocturn provide lightweight solutions to easily share one’s vision with audiences across the globe. With technological solutions physically shrinking, drive space continually on the rise (and cheaply), innovation pushing forward new concepts for live performance, it will be interesting to see how live electronic music performance will take shape in the years to come.