Spontaneity in Live Performance

I'd be curious to hear any tips for making a more spontaneous / engaging live performance.

To clarify, I'm on a shoestring budget, so my setup can be as minimal as drum machine + mixer + effects. Although it's good fun to twiddle knobs and fade different elements in and out, this "minimal" live performance doesn't really keep my interest. On the other end of the spectrum, programming full songs in advance doesn't leave much flexibility- I don't really want to go up on stage and press play, you know?

Anyways, just curious to hear from the EKT hivemind.

dunno, you could wear a silly hat?

be spontaneous man!

j/k i think live performance with electronics is and will always be kinda sucky in some ways, because of a broken cause & effect relationship. if you want this to come over as "really live", imho the best thing you can do is give the audience something to catch on to... basically people "get" someone who plays a guitar or any other acoustic instrument, they don't even need to see their fingers because it's so easy to follow, apparently it is a fun thing for the audience members' brains to understand and follow the relationship between e.g. a drummer moving her arms and percussive soundwaves hitting their audiotory sensors, in realtime.

so yeah with electronics it's always boring in this regard, because complex sound is generated in boring-looking boxes. so i dunno, i suppose it's good to answer to yourself the question which is more important for you:

- selling to the audience the notion that YOU ARE *REALLY* DOING THIS LIVE RIGHT NOW OMG AMAZORS *SHITS PANTS* (who cares)

- or delivering a good show (wear that silly hat)

it's a rock and a hard place really. the best way to go live is still to just grab a banjo and yell "hey!" (do it!)

*digs up old article* here's an old article by robert henke on this topic:

http://roberthenke.com/interviews/supercomputing.html

http://roberthenke.com/interviews/hitchhiker.html

it seems the Knife have found a way to perform which they're happy with:

http://thequietus.com/articles/12252-the-knife-interview

Add a Kaoss Pad to your setup. Done. You can use it for risers, loops, hysterical effects, and so on. I love mine.

I've never done a live performance, but I do find recording works in real time and improvisation to be more liberating than an entirely pre-sequenced track. For example, you can have just a couple of patterns looping and produce a wide range of sounds by randomly manipulating delay FX or arpeggiation, depending on your gear.

Sometimes it just takes some resourcefulness.

If you're asking for spontaneity tips in a thread, then you will have preparation, and you will not be spontaneous.

Well he's not gonna spontaneously run to the shops and buy some gear mid-set...

now that would be "performance art" of the edgiest kind wouldn't it

A midi trigger so you can play your drum machine instead of sequencing it. And a loop sampler. Hardware synths are fun too but don't really fit on a show string budget.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

check out this video:

goth trad uses ableton live to live-mix sections and elements of his tracks, he routes his main out through delay pedals, etc. there's a lot one can do

get a good looping setup and do a heaps Tim Exile / Beardyman / etc. Lots of people are doing it these days but it's a lot of fun to see live. The inevitable fuckups are fun to watch as well.

I've played live sets with nothing but a guitar and a loop pedal and they turned out pretty well. I'm sure with a synth and a drum machine, you could get some interesting stuff going.

  On 7/31/2013 at 11:36 PM, soundwave said:

dude the buttons are on the other side

I gig with pre-composed patterns then bring elements in and out in an improvised fashion, tweaking the hell out of the patterns as I go. Seems to work for most people...

To be MORE spontaneous in electronic music? Why?! Short answer >>> Buy a guitar. Just kidding!

I don't think you have any idea how difficult this is. First of all, you're expecting a technical answer on a philosophical question... You need to change your perspective and everything else will follow, trust me. It's ALL technical today that's why todays music is so artificial, stupid and it's all about copy/paste between each other.

You answer to me this fist and we'll see:

1. what does it mean 'to be spontaneous' + is it conscious state of mind, if yes how much, when exactly and when absolutely not?

2. what is music and why you're making it? what's your goal?

3. why to be spontaneous in music and why not?

4. how to hear spontaneous and how to distinguish it from a controlled randomness from a listener's pint of view? Can those two coexist?

5. what is improvisation?

6. what is a musical instrument and why some can bring you closer to spontaneity?

6a. #this is where your question should stand, paraphrased#

You don't have to answer this Qs to me but absolutely YES to your self and try to elaborate this to you're self as much as you can. Believe me, you know answer to all of this Qs very well, just have to dig into your self harder than usual. We're all burn philosophers.

I hope i wasn't a smartass here.

Don't be afraid to get impulsive. If that doesn't work, take a substance that will make you more impulsive.

  On 8/1/2013 at 5:25 PM, th555 said:

take a substance that will make you more impulsive.

Yes, i'm pulling back everything i said. Buy that guitar or something and get some drugs... if you have the look, the voice, the talent and an IQ of 149 then you couldn't be closer to the Jim Morrison.

Jim Morrison, yeah.

buy that guitar, I mean

  On 8/1/2013 at 7:05 PM, th555 said:

Jim Morrison, yeah.

buy that guitar, I mean

yeah, i know

but imagine

  On 8/1/2013 at 6:09 AM, modey said:

get a good looping setup and do a heaps Tim Exile / Beardyman / etc. Lots of people are doing it these days but it's a lot of fun to see live. The inevitable fuckups are fun to watch as well.

I've played live sets with nothing but a guitar and a loop pedal and they turned out pretty well. I'm sure with a synth and a drum machine, you could get some interesting stuff going.

 

  On 7/31/2013 at 11:36 PM, soundwave said:

 

dude the buttons are on the other side

dude the LED's are on both sides with the button ones on top :P

Ableton live with max and the push controller is probably ideal if you want to do stuff on the fly. It's not cheap though.

in the middle of your set rip off all your clothes and start doing the boneless boy dance.

  On 8/1/2013 at 7:43 PM, Frankie5fingers said:

in the middle of your set rip off all your clothes and start doing the boneless boy dance.

lol best

Thanks for all the advice! I think you may have nailed it with

  On 7/31/2013 at 9:19 AM, phling said:

, i suppose it's good to answer to yourself the question which is more important for you:

 

- selling to the audience the notion that YOU ARE *REALLY* DOING THIS LIVE RIGHT NOW OMG AMAZORS *SHITS PANTS* (who cares)

- or delivering a good show (wear that silly hat)

 

 

Ableton live and the kaoss pad do sound really neat, though- I'll definitely check them out.

  On 8/1/2013 at 5:16 PM, xox said:

1. what does it mean 'to be spontaneous' + is it conscious state of mind, if yes how much, when exactly and when absolutely not?

2. what is music and why you're making it? what's your goal?

3. why to be spontaneous in music and why not?

4. how to hear spontaneous and how to distinguish it from a controlled randomness from a listener's pint of view? Can those two coexist?

5. what is improvisation?

6. what is a musical instrument and why some can bring you closer to spontaneity?

6a. #this is where your question should stand, paraphrased#

 

You don't have to answer this Qs to me but absolutely YES to your self and try to elaborate this to you're self as much as you can. Believe me, you know answer to all of this Qs very well, just have to dig into your self harder than usual. We're all burn philosophers.

 

I hope i wasn't a smartass here.

Although I'm not going to write you an essay , you're asking some good questions- when i get to the heart of it, I'm starting to think that just producing a great show is more important than *REALLY* DOING THIS LIVE RIGHT NOW OMG AMAZORS *SHITS PANTS*. On a philosophical level, I'm still thinking though. I suppose I'm infatuated with the idea of a "unique one-of-a-kind meaningful" sort of performance- in contrast to copy/paste artificiality. But then again, structured or not, I suspect I'm overthinking this.

still, i'm not too fond of silly hats

  On 8/1/2013 at 7:43 PM, Frankie5fingers said:

in the middle of your set rip off all your clothes and start doing the boneless boy dance.

would that look like this?

im kinda confused about this live setup. just a drum machine, a mixer, and effects...? is the drum machine a sampler? if so, why not play your loops live instead of using pre-recorded ones? like, keep the "central" theme of the song intact, ie if you have a bassline that makes the song identifiable, use that pre-recorded loop, but write your drum and melody parts on the fly (from memory) during the live set. it might be tricky but all live performance is.. try coordinating with 3-4 other human beings on stage

you can also practice playing live tracks (in your studio) and record them straight to audio (mixed down) as you go so you can compare takes and reflect to get ideas of how you'd want to perform it during a set

there's really no wrong way to do this though!

(i also really like xox's approach to this question)

Here's some pointers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZt64_XOflk

Love the audience participation.

I can't stand electronic gigs where so called performers blag it pretending to look busy to a naive audience. I can always spot this a mile away so be warned if I'm there I'll know and I'll make an example of you!