We had Dev (Paradox) over to play live back when we used to do DnB nights in Zürich, late 90s-early 00s. You get a 1000 djs, but you only get one Paradox. Legendary.
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Yea, it was really awesome to see him up close. This place couldn’t have possibly held more than a little over 100 people.
Don’t really go for these sorts of subjective discussions. Much prefer to stick with undeniable objective facts.
Such as if the performance doesn’t contain bongos, banjos, or a harmonica solo, then it’s absolute garbage not worth watching.
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where’s the fracking cowbell ?
in the garbage with the rest of the cliches
I’ve put a lot of thought into this as I built live sets in 2020 and 2021 on elektron gear.
To me, a good live performance must have an element of risk. There is a chance something unexpected will happen, either a mistake or something great.
Secondly, a good live performance must show a display of skill. Notice that I say “show”, like… it has to be visual otherwise it might as well be a recording.
Note that a good DJ set to me can fit in here perfectly: show me some skill and a chance you fuck it all up and i’ll enjoy it.
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This is interesting subject and there a no single answer to it. The fact is, general audience don’t give a monkey if you press play on CDJ, trigger pre-arranged loops, or controlling 20 synths manually at one time. It’s up to an artist on how they define “live” show live. Check few live videos of Stephan Bodzin, Eelke Kleijn, Innellea. They are all playing live, but each one has a different technique and approach to his set. It’s mostly practiced and pre-programmed arrangement with stems and live instruments. There are elements of static arrangement as well as live improvisation.
Personally, I think doing anything in front of audience (even standing still) at the given time is actually LIVE performance.
Here’s another example - I just looked at “Paul Kalkbrenner live @ CRSSD Festival San Diego” video. Let’s quickly see what he does:
- he is using Ableton with pre-built arrangement. He’s not even launching/controling clips. He does seem to have in/out markers for different songs tho.
- he’s having fun twisting send knobs and playing with fx on top of his audio steams.
- in general, he’s acting more like a FoH engineer twidling eq’s and volume faders on the mixer in front of the crowd.
Yet, according to some people, he’s making music live on stage. if you scroll down to the commnents section you will see this on top:
“The best set or show I have experienced happened on this stage with this musical genius of a man.”
“Watching him making music… wonderful! He is a modern Mozart!”
“His song mixing technique is so smooth, perfect and unique”
Conclusion: Find your own way of defining live performance and move on. No one apart from you and geeky audience (5% of the total crowd?) will care what you’re doing on stage. It’s more about what is coming their way out of the speakers.
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This comment sums it up so good!!
I also am a huge fan of Emptyset, who put a lot of effort to prepare theirr sets which basically consist of huge analogue setups wirh a lot compressors etc. and on stage they have triggered this immense feedback- and singnalprocessing chain with a selfbuilt strung instrument made of…well, a single string, and another one nade of a single drum XD
In other words: Those two guys were playing a single string instrument and a single drum instrument with wicked visuals, rocking the crowd for the whole show.
guess it just depends on who the audience is because I know a lot of instances where if a dj brought up some keyboards or the band brought up a dj that the audience of fans (not musicians/geeks) would throw tomatoes lol… I still maintain that it’s not about what is coming out of the speakers, it’s about what the audience expects to be coming out of the speakers, like someone mentioned earlier try playing a record in place of the philharmonic, or try DJing a Radiohead show, or try brining up a band at a deadmau show, could be cool for a novelty moment but people don’t want to see that… can you imagine if prodigy just dJ’ed their shows, there would be mayhem, people want to see and hear those synths.
ultimately I agree with you that there is no single answer because I believe there are people who don’t care as well, but I think that the general public cares a lot more than people give them credit for when it comes to what they like, there are just too many varied types of performances for the majority of the general public to not be caring about what kind of performances they are into imo
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I also think there are WAY more “audio nerds” in the audience at DJ/dance and other electronic music events than there used to be. I’d wager especially at small events, where people are using primarily hardware setups and playing non-dance electronic music “audio nerds” are probably the core audience.
I 100% agree the audience cares and matters–I would never tell any of my writing students to not think about who their audience is and what their expectations are. Pretending the audience are a bunch of mindless muppets is a huge mistake IMO.
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TLDR: Groove boxes could be much more suited for actual live performances if developers would add some basic functionality but most of them fall short if live is your goal. Push 2 gets me pretty close to creating music in the moment.
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I saw this thread when it popped up. The OP and I know each other from various on line electronic music ventures and forums over the years and have been discussing this topic at length for quite sometime.
I’m certainly no purist when it comes to music making. Whatever works for you and whatever you want to call something is okay with me. I’ve been making mainly hardware based synthesizer “live jam” videos as my main output for about the last 3 years or so now. My main gripe with the traditional groove box is the fact that with most of them they require an arduous amount of pre programming and setup prior to being able to execute something commonly labeled as live.
With the exception of parameter modulation there is little you can do with a pattern once you’ve programmed it. With most groove boxes the only way to be able to get a B section in a track going is to, write another pattern. I’m not anti groove box by any means, played most all you could name. But most groove boxes continually take you out of the groove and put you back in the pattern creation process. To me this, in a way, negates the point of working with one.
The Analog Four, with its global transpose of all midi and internal tracks is the closest thing I’ve seen that solves this and makes “live performance” a bit more real on that box than others I have used. The Octatrack, for all it does, lacks this feature. If the Octatrack had that one specific feature I feel that would bring it home as the most amazing live performance groove box sampler on the market.
Anyway……
Given my issues with groove boxes and their (in my opinion) pseudo live nature I’ve been trying to build a system comprised of multiple components that allow for actually live, in the moment, electronic music production. The closest I’ve come to this is with a Eurorack setup using a method similar to Steevio’s albeit on a smaller scale. Outside of eurorack I usually bump my head against the wall trying to do live groove box production.
In an effort to get closer to actually live music I recently picked up an Ableton Push 2 to see where that would take me. This piece below does not contain prewritten midi of midi clips of any kind, drums are generative. All notes and structure of the piece was made in real time as you see it played on Push 2. To accomplish this I had to use some max4live devices and an application called Push Hacker 2. On its own Push is great for launching clips and composition assistance but, like so many electronic music devices, not particularly suited for making live music unless you open it up a bit with Max.
So yeah, this is my most recent attempt at creating electronic music in real time. It’s the closest I’ve got yet, even though I still have a long way to go as a performer….
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If you have and play instruments on stage, it’s live, it don’t matter if it’s acoustic or electronic…
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This guy is pretty live
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Nils is a genius, love his music.
I just want to say one more time, I poorly worded some things in the OP and my intent was discussion only. I was just curious what people thought and also frustrated, like @RFJ, at what I’ve been able to do vs. what I’ve been wanting to do.
If walking on stage on stage and pushing one button means live to you–its cool, I’m not trying to get on anyone’s case.
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Great thread. As it turns out, I am currently wrestling with those very ideas. In short, I’ve got a gig next week (not dance music) and I have no clue how to integrate any elements of performance into it. I’ve got a bunch of prerecorded tracks, which I’m pretty sure would otherwise be impossible to integrate in a single Live session with all their original instruments/FX without causing CPU overload; also, knowing myself, on the day of the gig I would probably zip through them at lightning speed and the set would be over in a fraction of what the current project duration is! I’ll probably figure something out (no stress as there is literally no pay – LOL)
This thread brought to mind one of the first gigs I played way back in the early 00s. It was a guerilla-style show in a fairly inaccessible spot, and there was no way I was going to bring hardware. So I simply burned two CD-Rs and played my tracks off portable CD players (NOT CDJs!). After I was done, someone earnestly asked me if I’d been improvising. So there.
Some of the worst and most interminable performances I’ve witnessed were as “live” as it gets: massive modular rig, no laptop in sight. If you ask me, it’s all about clarity of vision. If you’re just someone with too many toys, it’ll quickly become audible.
As far as techno/dance music is concerned, I’m much more partial to DJing than live sets anyway. I want to hear different approaches merging in unexpected ways. A live set can’t bring that to the table, especially if it’s just one person. Too often live techno is great for 10-15 minutes, then you realize all the tracks sound samey. But that’s just me.
And as others mentioned, budget/resources also play a role. Pay me a fair amount and I’ll probably figure out a way to really “perform” with my material. Until that happens, I prefer making tracks in the studio in my own way, even if it doesn’t immediately lend itself to performance.
Mind you, whenever I create a new track, I’m essentially jamming with established patterns (which I assume is what most people do? But then again I always see maniacs on YT who compose by copy-pasting kickdrums in Reaper. No thank you!), but just the thought of consolidating all my tunes into a single project makes me dizzy. I played a gig last month and the guarantee was $100. I ended up playing a Traktor set of all-new material and everyone was happy.
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Yes it can. A stem-based approach allows this.
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First I want to say, a lot of great thoughts in your response but since dance music is what I’m working with I gravitated toward this.
I’ve had many opportunities to build something “more live” than a DJ set and perform for people who like to dance to danceable music (wasn’t always a rave/club crowd). I would get like, oh, 30 hours into building that performance and always come back to–what is this adding to the experience for the audience or is it just masturbatory on my part? And then I’d say fuck it and just come back to a DJ set on CDJs (which lets be honest, you can do some cool live editing on CDJs with hot cues, looping etc).
I’d think back some of the “Live PAs” I’d seen at raves from techno artists and you are absolutely right–even out of my head on recreational chemicals it was cool for like 15 minutes then it was alright, well, this has been basically the same loop for 25 minutes and bail and go to another stage or walk outside and have a smoke until the next act.
I think my big problem at the moment is I don’t know who my audience is. My big (and in recent years only) gig has been canceled the last two summers. And I haven’t talked to my partner about whether we are going to try and do it again this year as the fest is back on.
No offense to the online dawless jamming crowd, but they aren’t really my audience. I don’t mind posting DJ sets or otherwise dance oriented performances online but I strongly doubt anyone is listening to those and dancing at home since I’m essentially a no name.
At this point I’m working on material just because I like making dance beats lol but its like…should I be prepping this to be something that is “performed” or should I just render this shit and finish it in my DAW and slap it in the CDJ?
When I started this thread I thought I knew what wanted to do and I’m already back to being very undecided.
My current thought is to have raw versions on my main sampler and DAW-polished versions on the CDJ and bounce between the two if I feel like getting fancy for a track or two.
Obviously we have discussed this at length. But finding the right piece or pieces of gear has been a real part of the struggle. 50% of it at least.
But just this morning I’ve realized I don’t know who, besides myself, I’m evening preparing these performances for and now I’m realizing that has been a serious part of the equation I’ve not thought a lot about.
I’m repeating myself, but when I was performing for an audience I always came back to the fact that my audience would probably have the most fun with just a plain old, well done, good taste in music DJ set.
If I’m doing stuff just for me, I’ll just fiddle forever in the studio and be happy. As you’ve always pointed out, having an end game for a project makes it much easier to finish. For me, the beginning of knowing the end game is who the audience is. I don’t know who my audience is anymore.
Posting things online has never felt “real” to me…it feels like when we used to leave CDRs of DJ mixes on the tables at clubs hoping someone would pick it up and listen. Like, I’m just tossing this shit into the void and who knows whose listening.
Then the last DJ mix I posted to Sound Cloud got 43 listens which blew my mind since I basically just use it as streaming storage space and promote it in no way, shape or form.
When the artist manages to take away my fear of death.
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