Electronic music live on stage, what is the point!

incinereight · Post by **incinereight** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 1:50 am

I agree completely with you ... I guess I never have that problem when I play live since when most acts are acting "intensely technical" I'm acting "Intensely Drunk"

bassntreble · Post by **bassntreble** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 4:10 am

ome word...Kraftwerk

...circa 1983 of course

MrYellow · Post by **MrYellow** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 4:15 am

It just so happens that traditional acts can make a song from scratch with
just a guitar a memory and ten fingers. We cant,

We can.

-Ben

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 5:07 am

I say forget about what the musician looks like on stage. There are video artists (vj's) out there who can do way more interesting stuff than a human twiddling knobs. I think its time to move on out of the performer-centered visual paradigm. Shift the focus from this one person up behind a computer, and out to everyone around you on the dancefloor, and immersive visuals all around.
It so much nicer to have tight visuals going, mixed realtime, than to shortchange it by trying to figure out ways to make knob-twiddling look more interesting. We're not bands (well, some of us are...). We have an opportunity to create something new and awesome. Lets not settle for a rehashing of the last 100+ years.

pixel · Post by **pixel** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 7:14 am

I totally agre with you angstrom!

cool that you bring it up - I've thought of this so many times.....
I used to be a saxophone player so when I started making electronic music I decided that I didn't want to mime a live set.
So - in the beginning I made songs almost from scratch when I played live:
I had each track on a midi channel and edited the midi live on all channels.
BUT - this made my music develop too slow so I had to give up that approach.

After that, I did a two or three concerts just pressing "play" and I was totally bored with that.

So - I thought a lot about what I could do and I came up with a method and for that I bought an MPC and a mixer - and now I have a cool way of doing my set live - it's totally different each time! And things actually can go pretty wrong too but I'm used to that from my time as a jazz musician....

Now my problem is reversed:

The crowd can't see that I actually play live!!!
That's really a shame I think.....

What to do about that??

Thought about the example that you gave with the guy that only went to his gear when he had to do something - maybe that'll work - but I need to do stuff a lot of the time so it might not work....

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 7:38 am

The dude/dudette bobbing his/her head while twiddling a knob is truly sad. I actually feel sorry for him/her. But the ignorant crowd don't know any better.

This is nothing more than show business, anyway. Lots of self-indulgent faking.. kinda like my last girlfriend...

That why I let the music basically play itself while I add real percussion and concentrate on playing the video and lights live. Even those very talented Live performers who mix & build tracks on the fly aren't appreciated, so I wonder why they bother. Really, the crowd don't notice or care, as long as the music moves them.

VJing is where it's at... let the music play itself... the crowd don't care. But immerse them in a true multimedia experience.. they'll remember that.

Nav · Post by **Nav** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 8:05 am

Faithless

Chemical Brothers

Groove Armada

Basement Jaxx

Daft Punk

Orbital

Prodigy

Coldcut

Thank goodness its not all bad....and from what I've seen of royksop dont there is no miming.

Ive seen all of these apart from prodigy live and jumped around cos of the highest energy sets I've ever seen!

Faithless and Groove Armada were over the last few years at the excellent Isle of wight Festivlal and Basement Jaxx again at the Isle of Wight at the amazing Bestival

So glad I moved home

Basement Jaxx are possibly the loudest PA/Set I have ever heard!

MrYellow · Post by **MrYellow** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 8:41 am

double

MrYellow · Post by **MrYellow** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 8:47 am

My answer to all this is....... Play an instrument.

I used to be a saxophone player so when I started making electronic music
I decided that I didn't want to mime a live set.

The crowd can't see that I actually play live!!!
That's really a shame I think.....

Yamaha WX5 Wind Controller/MIDI Saxophone.

I haven't played sax in years, but got one anyway.... Apart from running
outta breath from smoking and not practicing breathing, it's very good,
very. So now I've quit smoking, time to get back into it.

There is a guy that was hanging here..... Onyxashanti....

http://www.onyxashanti.com/

Has some samples up there....

-Ben

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 9:36 am

Nav wrote:Faithless

Chemical Brothers

Groove Armada

Basement Jaxx

Daft Punk

Orbital

Prodigy

Coldcut

Thank goodness its not all bad....and from what I've seen of royksop dont there is no miming.

Ive seen all of these apart from prodigy live and jumped around cos of the highest energy sets I've ever seen!

Faithless and Groove Armada were over the last few years at the excellent Isle of wight Festivlal and Basement Jaxx again at the Isle of Wight at the amazing Bestival

So glad I moved home

Basement Jaxx are possibly the loudest PA/Set I have ever heard!

Don't forget Way out West, The Crystal Method and Infusion.

Faithless was interesting but disappointing, they performed their music with rock instruments. I like rock, but I was expecting to have a more stoner friendly experience as opposed to rock gig!

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 10:14 am

MrYellow wrote:
It just so happens that traditional acts can make a song from scratch with
just a guitar a memory and ten fingers. We cant,
We can.

-Ben

We do!

globalgoon · Post by **globalgoon** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 10:23 am

i'd rather play in the dj booth than in the middle of a stage with spotlights in my face.

There's this fantastic program that allows you to jam your tracks in real-time, mixing and matching pre-recorded audio as well as software implementaions of synths and samplers - I forget what it's called right now though, but it's rad dude -totally dadical

Nav · Post by **Nav** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 10:48 am

sweetjesus wrote:
Nav wrote:Faithless

Chemical Brothers

Groove Armada

Basement Jaxx

Daft Punk

Orbital

Prodigy

Coldcut

Thank goodness its not all bad....and from what I've seen of royksop dont there is no miming.

Ive seen all of these apart from prodigy live and jumped around cos of the highest energy sets I've ever seen!

Faithless and Groove Armada were over the last few years at the excellent Isle of wight Festivlal and Basement Jaxx again at the Isle of Wight at the amazing Bestival

So glad I moved home

Basement Jaxx are possibly the loudest PA/Set I have ever heard!
Don't forget Way out West, The Crystal Method and Infusion.

Faithless was interesting but disappointing, they performed their music with rock instruments. I like rock, but I was expecting to have a more stoner friendly experience as opposed to rock gig!

Yeah I heah ya thought the same at least they give it there all! I was focused on Sister bliss most of the time

mosca · Post by **mosca** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 11:31 am

i 'saw' autechre play behind a sheet years ago.

i've seen kraftwerk 'play' a couple times.

i've seen your prodigy's and your chemical brothers and your underworlds jump about like twats

i dont mind a guy standing checking his emails - if the music makes me stroke my beard and nod my head then thats fine by me

i think we're getting carried away with this kind of thing, if you've ever had the misfortune to see oasis play live - they stand still and strum, very boring, godlfesh stood like statues when i last saw them, loads of 'real' bands dont actually put on a show either.

i come from an indie guitar band background - i can play 'real' instruments. to me its all about the sound not the visuals

blah blah blah

i like it - some of you dont - some of you do

we're all correct

mo

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 12:16 pm

mosca wrote: if you've ever had the misfortune to see oasis play live - they stand still and strum, very boring, godlfesh stood like statues when i last saw them, loads of 'real' bands dont actually put on a show either.mo

That's very true! I've been a guitar player since 16 (40th birthday last month

) I really don't understand why anyone wants to watch music being made at all.

For me it's like having a fixation on the process rather than the result. I got heavily into electronic music in the 90s (Fluke/Underworldetc) after years of rock music. I really liked the way the emphasis was placed on SOUND QUALITY and composition, rather than style and pose.

Nobody was particularly interested in what DJ was playing, at least not at first, the media changed all that by superstarring people like Sasha, Okenfold, Cox etc.

Now, it's got to the point that everything is SOOOOOOO safe and politically correct that everything is sort of stifled.

I used to work at Glastonbury every year since 94, havn't been since 2001 (or was that 2002?) every year the PAs get smaller and smaller as those stages get filled up by more of radio1's playlist artists. the emphasis more on fashion and less on sound.

I really miss it actually, just the smell of it all going on

Electronic music live on stage, what is the point!

way to go Angstrom