Very hard to define and as been said it’s largely subjective.
To me it’s about having a connection to what’s being played and the control one has over the direction of the perfomance. Because these will have a direct effect on the people on the dance floor.
To give a few examples using Ableton:
By just launching clips/scenes in Ableton one doesn’t really have a connection to what’s being played. And if it’s in chronological order there’s no control over the direction either. Now, if you do that and have a band playing live on top of that, it becomes a live performance. Because they do have a connection to what’s being played around the backing track and some control over the direction.
By launching clips/scenes in ableton as separate entities with a controller setup giving access to a wide range of macros to manipulate the sound to take it into different directions, one has a definite connection to what’s being played and the direction taken.
Difficulty
Of course there is a wide range of complexity within different types of performances. Full on improvisation being the most difficult to do right. But that just defines the difficulty, not really if something can be considered live. Which is something that’s often confused in this type of discussion.
Audience
It was mentioned that in general the audience doesn’t care if someone performs live or not as long as the music is great. I disagree with this. Within techno I’ve seen again and again how a proper live performance affects the audience. Especially if they are part of that performance in a way. Kink will hold up his drum machine to the crowd while slamming in rythma. Richie Hawtin has a bunch of cameras on his setup to create both a visual backdrop as well as showing the audience what he’s doing. Also done by the way he is standing on stage. Karenn is another great example. It might not be exactly clear to people what they are doing all the time, but it can be felt and seen. The control one has over separate sounds and how one communicates that to the audience is key here. This might just be as simple as the act of controlling a synth’s envelopes , reverb etc and then bringing the beat back. People can see that and hear that a human is controlling a sound.
My sleep deprived 2 cents.
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For me: can you change on the fly and go in a different direction. That you only just now that of? Can you ride on a mistake and turn it into a gift? Is it something new and different each time you play it? No matter if it’s instruments programming or DJing, if those things are happening it’s a Live Performance.
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Benn Jordan… what a complex mind: “I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself”. Yeah, me neither.
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trying to generalize:
what makes things „live“ is the degree of possibilities to screw things up.
the more — the better.
the game of live performance is having a plenty of possibilities to screw things up — and NOT screwing them up.
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Sounds like I could set up “mousetrap” over a laptop and press play.
I’m sticking with @Fin25’s distinction as being the one that matters to me personally.
The rest it seems people think playing live is like porn, they know it when they see it (except when they don’t (ref Zappa))
It seems there are some pretty demanding people here. Demanding of themselves, and their peers. Skill, jeopardy, improv.
thats right
There’s three kids called that at my kid’s playschool.
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This is a subject that I find fascinating.
As a listener I come from metal, rock and reggae music background mostly, so when I was young (like 13/16) I went to quite a few bands live with my brothers and parents.
When I started to find some interest in electronic music later on and started to go to show I was instently VERY disapointed by the “performance” aspect of it. I discovered DJ culture as well I was quite disturbed by the fact I went to see some acts I loved the music on record (Amon Tobin come to mind as the greatest disapointment) to go see live and only get a Drum & Bass DJ set of track I never heard and did not liked.
It took me some years to figure all this out and when I started playing electronic music myself my main goal was: I have to be a full band on stage by myself. This mean for me be VERY active on stage and this for two reasons:
1- It’s hell fun to play when you have a direct interaction with the sound coming out of the speakers.
2- people seems to really enjoy watching someone going mad on stage.
So I worked for a long time to try to find a system that would allow me to play my original tracks, but still with a lot of improvisation and remixing possibilities on the moment, so I could have fun on stage, and feel like i’m playing bass in a punk band 
Exemple here:
Explanation here for the curious:
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Why not make backing tracks, and add some guitar or drum performance -there you have your live component - i have seen it countless times. I also good with someone playing their synth. (Like Bodzin does etc.) So this press play types - yes that exists - but it also depends how much chances you have while youre playing - the more success - the more pressure to keep a standard - therefore less experiments are done. Very good DJ can experiment all their live - just with their records /playlists controllers, i think that counts as live act too.
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The bar is so high. How do people start? Spend 10 years not playing live, because they’re not good enough, and then emerge fully formed to meet your high standards?
I think, and I am sorry to be an arse, the best I can summon for this thread is “pfft!”
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Like I’ve said before, the army of knobheads that sell bullshit plugins by convincing bedroom producers all their tracks will sound shite without them have moved their snake oil promotional push towards the lucrative new hardware/DAWless/live jamming (and therefore live performing) dollar.
If you want to perform live, do it, and do it however you want to do it, for whatever reasons you want to do it.
Fuck anyone that wants to tell you you’re doing it wrong.
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Me and my friend Moe started our live project with the intention to deliver techno music and show that live techno sets are not boring an can be kind of groovy and dynamic. the only way to achieve this is to make it more impro and not to prepare a whole set in e.g. Abelton. We can react to the people on the dancefloor really quick and set a mood or groove pretty fast. After years of producing in the box and Djing its kind of refeshing to play live sets
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I get the beauty of improvisation but as long as it is held as some kind of synonymous for live, options will remain limited. If someone wants to tell me that a classical or prog-rock musician, reproducing what’s on their sheets or recordings as close as possible, is not a live performer, I will strongly disagree.
Live electronic music is still very much in its exploratory phase and limiting what live is to only one of its many possible avenues does not feel like the road to go.
Defining what live is seems like working on a Venn diagram with only non overlapping circles:
- what you really like doing
- what you feel is legitimate to present
- what is humanely possible for you
- what sounds good to you
- what gives you enough freedom
- what allows you to express yourself
- what the audience knows about performing electronic music
- what the audience expects from the event you’re playing at
- what budget and means you have
It feels like a pointless venture that will only result in more peer pressure to put on each other
So as @Fin25 said, just enjoy yourself, have fun and don’t care about what anybody says.
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Evil
And I would agree with you very much. And I would add “classical” or orchestral music. Some might call them cover bands.
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agree with the “possibility for mistakes” stuff above.
With a side order of “it ends up a bit different every time”
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Something to be said in relation to this topic is that nowaday tools/features on electronic music instruments make it much easier to actually improvise in a failsafe way.
I’m referring to quantize (with or without groove) for timing, and constrained scales for melodies, for example. With these in hand, it’s actually almost impossible to fail, so you can freely smash your fat fingers on your keyboard while still sounding good and feel like an artist 
I’m joking but, as far as I’m concerned, that’s really part of my live performances: remove the risk of major mistakes while still expressing yourself in a live context. I think this is really instrumental in the “performance” aspect.
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Some good comments early on , but I skipped to the end so apologies if already mentioned-
Kraftwerk The Robots live really plays with this
original pop video
This is part of why I brought it up in the first place. The whole “live jam” and “dawless” thing has left a bad taste in my mouth.
Very much enjoying reading everyone’s opinions here. I apologize I can’t possibly respond to everyone. I didn’t think this would explode like it did.
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