just get to know your instruments, that it and play live with whatever dudes
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Fake DJs Compilation
Boy that hurt so much to watch.
I had seen the Aoki bit before, the captions are great, lol…
The guy with the Zoom pedal though!
Some pretty convincing OT moves in the end there, I would say!? Hahaha.
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How “Live” you are is just ego stroking for the artist. People generally don’t care unless there’s singing involved. Set up some interesting sounds and press play if you want to, as to me it’s no different than an artist showcasing his paintings at a gallery event. On anything more than a small stage, I wouldn’t even have any idea what you were doing anyways. All I see is a dude with a couple of synths and a laptop with presumably Ableton running a bunch of clips. It’s all good
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I’ve noticed many times people pay much more attention when they see me playing a keyboard vs running patterns. People naturally grove to musicians playing, it’s unconscious.
Now, in a dark club with light effects and people in the way or a huge stadium, that has no effect. I’m talking about small venue type of scenes where you can really be seen.
As a thought experiment, imagine a classical concert replaced by dropping a needle on a record.
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isn’t that how playing an instrument works though, you learn how to play it, practice it, and perform it for folks right, doesn’t matter what kind of music, heck even rappers don’t perform for people before they know how to? hope I’m not missing your point though.
in the end if what we are talking about is art, then there is no answer, but if we are just talking bout what the definition of live playing is then it’s not rocket science, doesn’t matter if your playing groove boxes, modular, synths guitars drums, turntables, whatever once you start making the music sound with your hands you’re playing live, once the bulk of the music is playing with out you then you’re probably not and the music is instead being played by an sequencer, or playback machine. If the song doesn’t need your help to progress then it’s probably not live
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Probably not this.
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I thought I agreed with this definition, but then I thought about all those performances where the musician basically has a backing track and plays some instruments over it, usually improvised solo parts, and usually the set can work totally fine without them there.
So is a DJ set more live than this?
Indeed, practice, get good enough to start out playing in front of your friends, but then, in order to actually be a live performer you have to get the certified organic seal of “true live TM” approval, so that what you’ve spent time doing actually counts as live. Each note must be artisinal, organically grown, each sound hand sculpted from raw waveforms, each arrangement improvised at that moment, while expressing deep emotion and connection to the four bored boomers at the bar.
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‘Live’ is an extremely relative term.
Ive played and watched ‘live’ shows for over half my life, and it really comes down to the viewers perspective.
To sum it up, I would trade an obscene amount of ‘live’ shows ive experienced, to see Robert Miles back from the grave(rip) and press play to ‘perform’ Dreamland at even the shittiest sounding venue
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there is a difference between the question of what is art and what Is playing live
playing live has nothing to do with being artisanal, organically grown, or the rawness of waveforms… it’s basically the difference between a person and a tapedeck… lol why are you guys making this so hard.
this is live music
but if after he started the turntable he went to have a beer and came back when the record ended it wouldn’t be considered live music
Butler calls a DJ set a “live performance” and “[live]”-sets a “laptop performance” and i really don’t think that “laptop performance” is a good name for what it describes. DJs play on laptops, ableton-people do. And hardware-based people don’t but are still called “laptop performers”. I like his idea of strengthening the live-aspect of a DJ-set but this doesn’t seem like a good solution.
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I agree, I’m reacting to what I peceive as gatekeeping (by setting a high bar) around a question that is meaningless and all down to individual perception.
I need to stop replying, because my first answer of “pfft!” is enough
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no offense but I thought the question was more of a scientific one than an artistic one so I don’t see how gatekeeping or bar setting would apply, but if it is about the latter then please allow my “pshh”
to accompany your “pfft”
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I’ve been feeling like this language of mine is problematic for some people, I should have said that I feel like in my own work I feel like what I want to do “live” is some kind of practiced improv. Not that this is the bar everyone else has to live up to. But after I woke up and there were 50 responses already I didn’t want to dirty edit the OP LOL.
It really was just a scientific, polling, how do others see things type question. As in most electronic music “live” is very nebulous
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I don’t disagree that it is kind of a meaningless question. I just think its an interesting topic since the answer is really a huge gray area.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about that as well (albeit meaningless to some - which I totally understand) and got some nice insight from this thread, so thank you very much for creating it!
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I agree with the general argument that there is not much merit in defining the term “live” in one way or another. But the fact that it is used to announce/characterize/comment on performances gives it some social significance beyond subjective understandings, especially if “live” is used to signify some sort of higher status performance.
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Especially now that access to the tools to create electronic music has been democratized to a degree (as long as you have a computer and internet access, you can basically do it for free) a lot of the fans are more in tune with the process of creating the music and/or how it might be preformed live. So, if people are going to use that term some fans might have certain expectations. Thought again, if they want to be haters and claim something isn’t “live enough” that’s on them.
The fall before the pandemic (or maybe the fall before, time now has no meaning…) I went to see Reid Speed and Paradox at a small venue. Paradox was using hardware and a laptop to perform a DnB set and I couldn’t believe the people that were mocking him through the entire set (like literally yelling insults about how he was doing things on stage). I thought it sounded fantastic. I don’t know exactly what he was doing but I enjoyed it.
I came into the dance music scene when “live” was just anything other than a standard DJ set (though like I said, what some DJs can do with some turntables and a mixer is just as impressive as what some folks do with synths, samplers and drum machines on stage).
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Except hot knob, that shit don’t fly.
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“I stink, therefore I am.”