live electronic music these days

Does anyone ever hire a group of temporary musicians to play the keyboards and electronic drums like the good old days?

It seems these days it's always just some faggot with a Mac laptop standing behind a table playing .MP3 files of audio taken directly from the albums/singles/demos that said artist released.

What's the point of live music if it's just some lazy asshole playing audio files from his laptop?

louder and more people around you, than at home?

  On 8/21/2009 at 2:47 AM, Kcinsu said:

louder and more people around you, than at home?

If Yellow Magic Orchestra can play synthesizers live in sold-out football stadiums, then IDM Neckbeard Man #6,294 can hire musicians for a day to play live in a warehouse full of twenty stoners.

I saw u-ziq and company and those guys were sitting on a folding chair with a macbook on a folding table. I wanted my money back.

go see underworld, daft punk, prodigy, orbital, richie hawtin etc if you great visuals....

IDM is best left for the headphones

Any of you ever tried dancing?

I would like to know this as well, some people occasionally ask me whats involved with live electronic music and I usually mumble some junk about how they tweak all the filters live

I have never seen Daedelus live, but I hear it is awesome. He has the whole messing with the Monome in real time going for him.

i don't get the daedelus hype; the monomome is just a grid of buttons, how is this "cooler" or more live (or whatever the fuck ya'll are getting at) than a laptop or turning some knobs?

What countchocula was talking about:

well, yes, exactly...why is this any more "live" than doing the same thing with a laptop? i mean, he's just tapping buttons. i get that he's wearing a nice suit, he has intriguing facial hair, his hand gestures are not without their finesse; but ultimately he's just tapping some buttons that are triggering pre-recorded sounds. what's the big deal?

  On 8/21/2009 at 3:32 AM, Alcofribas said:

well, yes, exactly...why is this any more "live" than doing the same thing with a laptop? i mean, he's just tapping buttons. i get that he's wearing a nice suit, he has intriguing facial hair, his hand gestures are not without their finesse; but ultimately he's just tapping some buttons that are triggering pre-recorded sounds. what's the big deal?

I promise to tell you when you have the C added to the end of your name.

for the love of god some one please make this happen!!!!

well, I can't say for daedelus, but the idea of the grid is a really nice one. Having buttons to trigger an event, is a bit of a different thing, than turning a knob, both in movement, and in what you do with it.

a well put together pallete of loops, phrases, sounds, FXs, and etc can go a long way when you have a means to quickly bring each elements together in real time.

Now, the monome itself, is no longer really all that relevent. Firstly because akai just took their concept and made it user friendly and versitile.... im talking about the APC40 controller for abelton live.

people have already made an app so you can use the apc40 as a monome.

but now that Max is being integratted fully into live, its just going to get rediculous... an already great platform for live performances, now enhanced not only by a controller, but by the ability to allow the user customize allllll sorts of stuff.... so those buttons on the apc are now able to do 100000x times as many functions as they did before.

regardless of it maybe not being "exciting" to watch.... at least it allows for a clear indication (visually and audibly) that the music that is heard is being substantially "performed"... opposed to tweaking effects with knobs.

on a different note: I dont see why electronic musicians dont invest in proper stands... do you really enjoy leaning over a card table about 2 feet too short, for the duration of your set? You cant assume the place you are going to play is going to have something at your level.... so buy a fucking stand.... save your back.

from personal experince as a live contemperary acid musician, i can say that gigging live around england and europe is very quite stressful and takes more effort then youd relize.

from suitcases breaking in dublin, to sh-101's breaking in latvia, laptop mailfunction in malta, losing leads and power adapters, and trying to get everything in a suitcase whilst being under 15lb all good fun at the office

its all actually quite fun playing live but it takes alot of effort to lug around £1000 worth of analog equipment trying not to break it, sticking it in ruck-sacks as heavy as a 10 year old boys and thinking of what to sacrifice to put in a suitcase with a couple of pillows to protect it from burly men throwing it around baggage terminals

tho in my career i have only had one thing broken full-on which is my sh-101 from a flight from latvia to stansted flyign with ryan-air.

when we play out we have a lot of shit automated, but we always keep a few tracks open for us to screw with on the controller. we also play guitar, trumpet, keys, drums and we are attempting to work all the live instruments into my lexicon jamman looper, but it only likes to sync with live on tuesday, wednesdays and saturdays.

we try to move around at least every song, sometimes within a song. i hear people love when you switch instruments. mostly we just try to get a good flow, with emphasis on the transitions. one guy who does the kind of set i dream of is cepia, though he's 100% computer, no live instruments. i have one of his 30min sets if anyone cares to listen, i would rank it up there with ae in terms of overall feel and flow, obviously not quite as technical as ae though.

  On 8/21/2009 at 3:38 AM, Kcinsu said:

 

on a different note: I dont see why electronic musicians dont invest in proper stands... do you really enjoy leaning over a card table about 2 feet too short, for the duration of your set? You cant assume the place you are going to play is going to have something at your level.... so buy a fucking stand.... save your back.

Thats fucking weird man, like freaky weird, I had a dream today where all the electronic musicians were in a record shop together all buying their own stands because they were pissed off with not having one they could take to events with them. I shit you not.

  On 8/21/2009 at 3:26 AM, abusivegeorge said:

What countchocula was talking about:

thats more of a dj set it seems. if thats his music... then it seems a little lazy... if its a dj set... then whatev

i like go just use tables. since i am too poor to afford a laptop, i lug the desktop to gigs. we also take an entire drumset, sometimes a half a drumset, trumpet, guitar, bass, keyboard, all the controllers/effects/various sound boxes. by the time i've packed up that shit i'm just banking on a table being available at a venue

i'm certainly not arguing about the coolness or potential of the monome/grid set-up, just wondering why this is considered more "live" or "performative" than, say, seeing autechre during the confield tour when they just had some laptops and nords -- they're probably controlling way more parameters and doing a great deal more "live" stuff with a mouse than they could ever do with a monome.

i realize you can see some guy tapping a thing and think "wow man i totally see how he's triggering those loops and stuff" but i just don't find it vastly more of a performance.

  On 8/21/2009 at 3:43 AM, abusivegeorge said:

  On 8/21/2009 at 3:38 AM, Kcinsu said:

 

on a different note: I dont see why electronic musicians dont invest in proper stands... do you really enjoy leaning over a card table about 2 feet too short, for the duration of your set? You cant assume the place you are going to play is going to have something at your level.... so buy a fucking stand.... save your back.

 

Thats fucking weird man, like freaky weird, I had a dream today where all the electronic musicians were in a record shop together all buying their own stands because they were pissed off with not having one they could take to events with them. I shit you not.

clearly it's true... it's in the ether

  On 8/21/2009 at 3:46 AM, Alcofribas said:

i'm certainly not arguing about the coolness or potential of the monome/grid set-up, just wondering why this is considered more "live" or "performative" than, say, seeing autechre during the confield tour when they just had some laptops and nords -- they're probably controlling way more parameters and doing a great deal more "live" stuff with a mouse than they could ever do with a monome.

 

i realize you can see some guy tapping a thing and think "wow man i totally see how he's triggering those loops and stuff" but i just don't find it vastly more of a performance.

well, when its so obvious... like daedelus' subdivision stutters... it gets old fast.

but if you have all sorts of actions and stuff set up on the controller.... people see you doing things.... hear the result, but at the same time, not lost on a gimmick. it shouldnt be about banging the visual feedback part over the audiences head.... it should be an after thought.

and yeah.... im sure they can do a lot more with the mouse... but there, there is 0 visual feedback between audience and the music.

i mean, lets face it... people want to SEE live music.... people say "Im going to go see..." and not "Im going to go hear...." more often than not. now, the music part should be a given... it should be good.... but at the end of the day, the enjoyment in seeing a live show, is being able to witness the musician performing his creation in real time. its part of the awe of the arts... to witness someone in the act of creation... its pretty awesome.... but there needs to be some fundamental understanding of what is happening, for it to be appreciated. you dont have to fully understand it, burt you have to be able to recognize it.

at a recent gig i used my ipod as a tilt sensitive midi controller; at one point i strolled around the club letting people prod it. i've also used wii controllers to drum gabber kicks and control parameters. when i was more into circuit bending i was using a bent keytar. i also always improv with a keyboard. this isn't all necessarily to put on a good 'show' for people, but mostly so i can have a little fun and not feel awkward clicking away at a screen all the time.

  On 8/21/2009 at 2:42 AM, my usernames always really suck said:

Does anyone ever hire a group of temporary musicians to play the keyboards and electronic drums like the good old days?

 

It seems these days it's always just some faggot with a Mac laptop standing behind a table playing .MP3 files of audio taken directly from the albums/singles/demos that said artist released.

 

What's the point of live music if it's just some lazy asshole playing audio files from his laptop?

you should totally watch 24 hou party ppl bitch

oh dude, i totally realize that, i'm just speaking about that specific video which seems kinda boring.

but even if you go and see a pianist performing some epic solo piano piece you might not necessarily be able to see precisely what's going on, especially if you're seated somewhere where you can't even really see the pianist's hands...which leads me to question the point about "seeing..." i think the real issue is one of risk; if you see what the performer is doing you can detect where he/she might fuck up or, alternatively, see just where they pull off some amazing shit. it's so easy to be cynical about some one behind a laptop b/c if they fuck up they might just press "X" and it plays the tuss or something...

  On 8/21/2009 at 3:56 AM, Kcinsu said:

  On 8/21/2009 at 3:46 AM, Alcofribas said:

i'm certainly not arguing about the coolness or potential of the monome/grid set-up, just wondering why this is considered more "live" or "performative" than, say, seeing autechre during the confield tour when they just had some laptops and nords -- they're probably controlling way more parameters and doing a great deal more "live" stuff with a mouse than they could ever do with a monome.

 

i realize you can see some guy tapping a thing and think "wow man i totally see how he's triggering those loops and stuff" but i just don't find it vastly more of a performance.

 

well, when its so obvious... like daedelus' subdivision stutters... it gets old fast.

 

but if you have all sorts of actions and stuff set up on the controller.... people see you doing things.... hear the result, but at the same time, not lost on a gimmick. it shouldnt be about banging the visual feedback part over the audiences head.... it should be an after thought.

 

 

and yeah.... im sure they can do a lot more with the mouse... but there, there is 0 visual feedback between audience and the music.

 

i mean, lets face it... people want to SEE live music.... people say "Im going to go see..." and not "Im going to go hear...." more often than not. now, the music part should be a given... it should be good.... but at the end of the day, the enjoyment in seeing a live show, is being able to witness the musician performing his creation in real time. its part of the awe of the arts... to witness someone in the act of creation... its pretty awesome.... but there needs to be some fundamental understanding of what is happening, for it to be appreciated. you dont have to fully understand it, burt you have to be able to recognize it.

this. many people are doing a lot of intense shit despite not doing anything obvious to stare/chin-stroke at, and that is tangible when you listen. threading stuff together in max or PD for example - elaborate collages of their music. i know a guy who programs his entire live environment/sequencer from scratch with a complete mashup of code - he's essentially controlling the music through a web browser.

i think it's a case of each to their own, and in context of the situation. in a more chin stroke situation it's perhaps better to have something to see but by no means should this be a priority. i was pretty enthralled watching poborsk just coax and tweak the fuck out of just a monomachine + nord.