Live Session - Dawless + Electric Violin

Elektronauts Our Music
#1

Fellow Elektronauts - happy new year!

I wanted to share this live session, filmed a couple of weeks ago.

I’m using a minitaur for bass, AR for drums, DN for synths, OT as a mixer / sample player and the Juno for well… juno stuff :wink:
Everything is clocked by the DN.
Line 6 Helix for violin processing and the Pigtronix Infinity as loop station.

I’m loving to play dawless, but somehow I’m overwhelmed.
There’s so much (fun stuff) to do with just the machines so that I play less and less violin, and I’m thinking about keeping the lessons from a dawless setup and translate it back into Ableton. Although it’s a fun experience for me to play this way - the audience probably won’t notice a difference in - it’s been tough to find the right words, I guess coolness factor, or whatever, between a dawless set and an Ableton set, although the latter offers a few advantages…

I think from an audience perspective, a laptop based set would be more interesting. For video sessions this is kind of different, 'cause you can see and hear the knob manipulations, but I’m playing live a lot (usually) and this has been bothering me for a while now…

Who else has been in that kind of situation?

2 Likes
#2

I really appreciate to see an hybrid instrumental / electronic set, well done. Maybe because that’s what i would like to achieve, it is quite rare to see a balanced set on these two levels.

I guess you could make use of the OT’s arranger to sequence in an evolving way:
playing, then sampling it so you can tweak knobs, using the fader to transition and scenes, you can even sequence the sampling. Depending on your free tracks available you could maybe even get rid of the Pigtronix (and just using a midi pedal if needed).

All this would leave you some time to play with things possibly changing in the back the same way it would happen on Ableton.

I kind of think you underuse the OT on this regard (Dynamic Performance Sampler, remember? :wink: )

Seems like you have the Electroviolonist hat :wink:

(dédicace @chapelierfou)

#3

Thanks man, appreciate you taking the time to dive into the topic :slight_smile:

Yeah, totally, I could streamline the whole thing a bit more by giving more control to the OT. But then again I’m running into issues. I’ve originally had the OT as the master, but that gave me some weird issues with glitchy MIDI CC values, patterns on other machines not changing (randomly), etc. and since making the DN the master, it’s much better.

I’m just not quite sure that this setup is the best to translate my music.
I really like to break out of the 4-bar thing, and tbh. it’s a bit annoying to create 8, 12, 16 bar loops on 3 Elektron machines in parallel. Sure, I can change the track scaling, or use trig conditions etc. but yeah… Also I think it’s a bit of a pain to have one machine operating within a Sound per pattern logic, like the Digitone, one with parts and one with Kits, especially when you have a song with A, B and C parts.

Right now on the OT I’m set up as following:
T1: Thru track for drums + bass
T2: Flex for resampling T1
T3 + T4 + T7 + T8: Samples from the production (organic sounds, single instruments, vocals etc.
T5: Thru track for synths
T6: Flex for resampling T5

I find that the recording time for livelooping the violin is just not enough to be a viable option and I’m super comfy on the Infinity as I’ve been using it for years.

Generally I’m really enjoying performing dawless, but nevertheless I’ve always got a feeling of having to rush through the songs, because I know that I could spend 12 minutes just jamming on one track. I might enjoy that, but from a listeners point of view… not so sure. Speaking general public here, not synth nerds, that’s another topic.

Listening back to live recordings I’m always feeling that nothing’s happening for too long, stuff gets boring etc and it’s driving me nuts a bit.

And then there’s further opportunities like integrating video and lights (DMX), recording etc. that are just so much easier when taking the software kind of way

BTW - Of course I know @chapelierfou - I’ve actually dropped into electronic music thanks to him - big fan of his work and we’ve met a few times actually! :wink:
And the hat thing actually started with a St. Patricks Day gig playing in a pub, a few years earlier :smiley: :beers: :four_leaf_clover:

#4

Pretty cool performance!

You’re quite a bit ahead of me, in my own quest to put together a short set with groovebox and live violin. At least half of my own set will be covers, which takes off pressure to compose something interesting. Thus I can’t offer any advice.

I am not a professional audio engineer or possess equivalent expertise but my impression of the majority of laptop based performers that I have seen is that their mixes tend to be muddy. Also, there’s a tendency to use too much reverb. There have only been a few laptop-based performers where I thought the sound was really good - you can tell they took the time to make sure the mix will sound good in a live setting. It is a common mistake to assume that the mix you made on your headphones or on your monitors at home is going to sound exactly the same in a club or other live venue.

If the composition and arrangement are good, and you’re not ruining the piece with a muddy mix (panning and levels are not set correctly, too many things fighting for the same frequency range, etc.), the non-geek audience will not care if you’re using a laptop or not, especially since you also play a freaking violin.

I hope you will keep sharing your violin + electronic performances, regardless of what direction you decide to go next.

#5

Tell me about it, i just received a DN and am trying to troubleshoot MIDI since 2 days. Last try, it was switching between patterns on the linked devices without knowing why.
Nevertheless i don’t loose hope to iron that and have the OT as the master brain (better Arp, Parts and PC, …)

I understand that, having used a looper for years as well but i eventually got tired to watch my feet all the time (the project was relying essentially on loops). I might add it as a MIDI slave at some point.

This would also happen in Live, it’s about composing not about the gear.

Nothing puts me more off than seeing a laptop on stage at the center of the setup.

#6

Hi Chris,
first at all: nice livesession!

I can understand very well what you meant by “Who else has been in that kind of situation?” because I am saxophone player and tried some dawless “performances” (at least in the rehearsal room…) last year. You find them also in the our music thread.
I think, Live is a very solid playback machines for fixed patterns (especially when the structures are more complex than one part that is one 4-bar-loops) while the point of a hardware is, that you can change the sounds and patterns much better on the fly. The problem is just, that in this hybrid setting our hands are busy, when playing the instrument, so that the full potential of the hardware is not used. When I let the AR just play through a chain of patterns, I thought, at this point it doens’t make that much sense to play hardware. So after these Videos, when I even played with other musicians I chose to just use the Digitakt and put less samples per project on it to give the musicians more space to play and me more chance to manipulate the patterns and interact. That felt much better but I don’t know if I have found the best way to use the pros of hardware.
As yourpost is 2 years old: How are you playing by now and how do you like it?
greetings, philipp

#7

I think you are confusing the day and the year. When the post is recent i think the number on the right tells about the day and when it is an old one it is qbout the year.

#8

Hmmm….Yes, it obviously confused me. But why does it say 5d and 2019 next to eachnother?

#9

19th of january, five days ago…

#10

Ah, ok. :joy: