performing live, and making it interesting

ive mastered my sets onto Reel to Reel, then i play live MS10 over the top

i like the idea that you could show up to one of your own sets drunk as fuck or on any number of crazy chemicals and still manage to crank out an apparently flawless set.

only speculation and of course when i say apparently flawless i just mean your synth wont fuck up a note because your intoxicated, the equipment will always hit the mark and if you have some decent material it isnt exactly a huge challange to press play and tweak knobs n stuff.

at least thats the way i see it, i've never performed live and dont have any friends who have either so its all speculation, although i did see a 4 man electronic music act in which only 2 were playing at any given time and the other 2 were drinking, chillin or w/e and they would kinda take turns.

  thehauntingsoul said:

i like the idea that you could show up to one of your own sets drunk as fuck or on any number of crazy chemicals and still manage to crank out an apparently flawless set.

 

only speculation and of course when i say apparently flawless i just mean your synth wont fuck up a note because your intoxicated, the equipment will always hit the mark and if you have some decent material it isnt exactly a huge challange to press play and tweak knobs n stuff.

 

at least thats the way i see it, i've never performed live and dont have any friends who have either so its all speculation, although i did see a 4 man electronic music act in which only 2 were playing at any given time and the other 2 were drinking, chillin or w/e and they would kinda take turns.

Could be like that but man.. it's just the way you prepare stuff for live performances. Some people fire Ableton Live and trigger scenes. Hell alot of breakcore artists press the damn spacebar every 3 minutes to play a fucking wav file. You can definitely fuck shit up if you're an electronic musician. When it comes to concentration I'm easier off playing my guitar for an hour on stage than doing some set like Autechre lately. That stuff is mental and requires alot of concentration. It's as hard as you want it to be, and being on the edge during a live show can make it very tense and interesting.

Myself, I've done different things live. The coolest electronic (cause I'm playing a lot of guitar too) show I did was when I built myself a patch in Max/MSP with multiple loops. The only things that were prepared were the audio loops. The rest was improvised, I had loop start and end under control, and pitch mainly, along with a few other parameters. Kaoss Pad as an outboard effect and that was an awesome thing to do. It was as surprising for me as for the audience, so that's pretty cool. I've also taken Ableton Live on stage with me, just sequencing and one Nord synth as hardware to tweak some stuff. Alot of people in the audience only care about what comes out of the speakers (man some people I've spoken too don't even get the difference between a DJ set and a live act) but myself I prefer tweaking as much as possible live.

One thing I seem to care less for is the actual appearance/'outside' of an electronic act. I've also never ever seen interesting visuals. But that's probably just me.

I sit on the floor, people like that.

Attach a couple of laser pointers to a pair of glasses.

my sets are more track based - i dont feel comfortable or aged enough to go with repetition or 'evolving' music, which i know for a fact makes my sets less accessible, especially when from even early gigs ive had people requesting songs. that said, my usaul setup is mixing/mashing tracks together with extra assigned effects whilst playing in synthesizers live, which i find fun enough.

ableton is used obviously. its quick and seeing as i dont have time to spend ages on making a set is perfect. you can get alot done with it, especially with extra midi routing programs. depending on what time im playing i make them to a certain degree 'drunk proof'. for extra fun i use circuit bent keytars, wii controllers and once, vocoders.

its all about the midi controller really though - transforming movement/expression into something. that said, you need to know it inside out, otherwise youre run the risk of just being someone wanking about with noises. for example, learn your scales on an XY controller or the right filter sweeps with a wii controller.

i can only imagine what it must be like working all on hardware. and how i fucking wish i could.

i kind of go byt the "what would i like to see in a music performance" and do what i can about it

just you wait till i can afford pyrotechnics and cheerleaders