This has been bugging me for a while, like about ten years. It's a huge subject so apologies for the huge rant!
Electronic musicians pretending to play should get a life
I'm watching Royksopp on stage at Glastonbury on my TV right now. Lots of touching knobs on synths that arent plugged in, including my old favourite bit of window dressing the MS20. No patch cables, no audio output cable. Nice.
What is the point?
What is the point of standing there in front of a crowd pretending to play music, no sign of any charisma .. just nodding and touching dials?
Of course the crowd applaud at the end of each song, but it just seems extremely lame to me. Boybands mime, where is th ecredibility in miming 90% of a set?
They aren't the only ones of course, it's rife. I know loads of big name electronic acts who do anything from play a DAT (!) all the way through, to heavily sequenced four bar samples triggered by an industrial unit, while beautiful hired hands and expensive light try to con the audience with an elaborate mime.
electronic musicians nodding like car shelf ornaments watching a timeline
Do you ever think, I dont really need to be here, I have engineered my set just to have a special 'glamour shot' noise to trigger, but I could easilly press 'go' and it would all work fine, the audience wouldn't actually notice. If 90% of the audio is automated, why exactly are people pretending to turn dials? There is a submereged knowledge that it is basically a con.
showmanship and the lack of it
Obviously showmanship is crucial to making good entertainment, even cheesy guitar histrionics on a 3 note solo.. but surely the point is lost when the 'showmanship' consists of nodding like a car ornament and the audio is unrelated to the movements made.
no visible cause and effect in electronic music
Electronic music just doesnt look good right now, at least with 'traditional' acts you know that when the blokes stop moving about the music will stop - but with electronics there is no cause and effect. Two guys touch dials and gurn and a loud noise happens, two guys stop and light a ciggie .. noise stays exactly the same!
What is the reason that we are standing up there, to trigger a 'boom' sample on time once or twice in a song?
really, I'm sick of it.
make the DJ booth bigger!
It makes sense to me in the DJ booth, Electronic music(in its currently popular form) from the DJ booth seems correct. You aren't meant to spend all night looking at a DJ - you are meant to dance and give the guy the occaisional glance. But if we are to be on a stage with everyone watching ... it seems to me that the mode of expression is outdated.
If you went to a ballet or a play and they showed a film instead the occaisional dancer wandering on... surely you would feel short changed.
Truth in performance
Popular Electronic music is not about visible performance .. it is about studio sounds which can take a long time to make, which are difficult to create. If people really watched us making our music it would take about a month for them to see one song be 'created' from scratch!
It just so happens that traditional acts can make a song from scratch with just a guitar a memory and ten fingers. We cant, isn't it time we re-invented the way that electronic music is played live into a more honest way?
What's the solution?
I know a good few people on this forum perform more 'live' than most electronic acts, so I wonder what you all think about the huge amount of laptop 'nodding dog' acts out there. How do you make an electronic performance more honest? Is electronic music actually suited to an 1800s style theatrical stage at all?
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