Mobius 8: Invisible Touch
Keyboards never felt quite right to John Laraio, not for electronic music anyway. “I couldn’t really get my emotions out by hitting buttons on a keyboard,” he says. “And I wanted to have an organic interface to perform electronic music.” So he did what anybody would do: He invented his own way to tweak synth voices, samples, and loops — without touching any buttons or keys. “I grew up playing the drums and I like that motion,” he says. “I wanted something that was special, something that would use motion to control music.” Laraio borrowed some technology from the security industry and had it soldered into a few MIDI controllers and keyboards.
Suddenly, the musician had an ethereal connection to his machines. They responded to the velocity and position of his hands, allowing him to create riffs and trigger drum fills with a flick of the wrist. The new interface revolutionized the way Laraio approached electronic music and performance. He took on the moniker “Mobius 8” and began experimenting with his new powers. He created a massive, multi-headed beast of an electronic music instrument called “Hydra” and used his airy control system to direct animatronics, lighting rigs, and even video streams. His shows became multimedia extravaganzas, conducted solely with movement. Word spread and Mobius 8 sold out across the world, performing with Jon Bon Jovi, Third Eye Blind, BT, and even *NSync. He created and produced the Wade Robson project for MTV and performed at the G-Phoria video game awards show.
Today, Hydra is leashed to a Mac running Logic Pro. Logic Pro is the beast’s brain, the core controller that directs all of the various gadgets, lasers, lights, and screens on stage. “Logic Pro allows me to be a conductor,” says Laraio. “I can control everything through it: music samples, effects, lights. It’s at the center of everything.”
Creative Deconstruction
Laraio loves to take things apart. “I’ve always been curious,” he says. “When I was a kid, I had more fun taking my toys apart than playing with them. I like to explore things and see what I can do with them. I always need new technology to work with.”
When he wasn’t deconstructing toys, the Philadelphia native was playing music. At first, he hammered out beats on a drum set. Eventually, he picked up a guitar and started playing around with keyboards. “I have a really solid rock background,” he says. “I played with a progressive rock band for quite a while.” The young Laraio rocked with the best of them until he left the East Coast for Los Angeles. There, the rocker took up MIDI programming and started arranging beats for hip-hop stars and Jungle DJs. His programming expertise led him to the legendary rock band Yes, who was experimenting with electronic music. “I ended up touring with Yes as a second keyboard player,” he says. “From there I became heavily involved in electronic music and I started to figure out new ways to perform it.”
Laraio saw infrared technology as the key to unlocking a more organic way to interact with electronic music instruments. At first, the sensors were binary, capable of discerning only “on” and “off” input. Then, with a little refining, they could read position and velocity. “At first, I was just triggering sound with it,” he says. “I put a sensor on a drum and it would set the sample off.
“But I wanted it to read how fast I was moving through the beam, wanted it to read velocities and turn on different sounds. I wanted it to be like hitting a drum.” Rap a drum lightly and it whispers. Slam it with a stick and it booms. Likewise, Laraio’s system could sense the ferocity of a virtual hit and adjust the music accordingly. It was natural. It was organic. It was just what Laraio was looking for.
Taming the Beast
Hydra, Laraio’s most advanced movement-sensing instrument, was named after the mythical multi-headed serpent-dragon. The instrument does resemble a Hydra, its multiple sensing pads perched at the ends of serpentine aircraft aluminum tubing. “I set it up like a drum set,” says Laraio. “It can trigger everything from loops to tracks in Logic and Ableton Live. It can pan, it can control volume, FX, video, it can control the laser and lighting systems and it all reacts to movement.”
On stage, Mobius 8 and Hydra appear as apparitions from the future. Laraio often sports dark glasses and has been known to coat his head with iridescent paint or mask half his face in chrome. He conducts an orchestra of light, music, Images, and mechanical motion with precise movements of gloved hands. Hydra carefully tracks his actions, shooting signal to a MacBook Pro running Logic Pro. “I’ve always liked the environmental side of Logic,” says Laraio. “It’s very easy to split things up and send them off to different systems. Logic is perfect for what I do.”
Using Hydra, Laraio can adjust the speed and pitch of loops and samples that he has composed in Logic Pro. He can even scratch the samples, modulate effects, and play native software instruments.
But Hydra is only one of Laraio’s tools. He’s strapped with sensors that allow him to “play” his samples on Logic Pro and Ableton Live while he walks through — and interacts with — the audience. “I’ll take a little sensor out into the audience and let them affect the show in some way,” he says. “Sometimes the sensor is connected to the lights, sometimes it’s connected to the animatronics.” The portable sensors can be linked to any part of the massive multimedia show, and their functions can be reassigned during a performance.
