Sounds like they needed more than one stage.DeadlyKungFu wrote:LMFAO that's a great story!!
Some people are beyond clueless, but it's their party. I hope it'll help you lighten the butterflies for the next gig, you'll know not to take it too seriously.
Sounds like the group had some big talkers, "l know someone who can...", "well I know someone who can..." and they mashed together some kind of evening to sell coffee so they can do some activity with their group.
Karate, Coffee Raffles, Salsa requests and DnB, quite the menagerie... welcome to the land of the lost.
Live techno sucks (not)(follow-up)(and nightmare gig story!)
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suburbanbather
- Posts: 1376
- Joined: Sat Jul 03, 2004 11:19 am
- Location: Waldorf MD
During a Cornelius show, one of the members held up a Boss SP202 sampler, faced it torwards the crowd and pressed some of the buttons in time to the music, "Cor-Cor---Cornelius" He then handed it to one of the people in the crowd and of course, a bunch of people were trying to grab the sampler and hit the buttons. Once he handed it over to the crowd the sounds coming out of the sampler was basically just a bunch of random sounds all at once. It was a mess, but it got the crowd worked up and literally had them involved in the performance. I'm shure Cornelius was completely prepared to say goodbye to that little sampler.pulsoc wrote:I am hoping on one part of my upcoming FIRST live performance with Live to just grab my Oxygen eight and hold it facing the audience as I smash booming oneshot samples in ya face!
Once you, the electronic musician, start gigging on a more regular basis you will encounter the occasional patron who comes up to you, even while you've got two hands on your controllers, and a foot on the pedal, and maybe your head crossing the d-beam field, looking very intense like BB King playing a guitar solo, and ask: "can you play some house?".
If i had the resources i'd project my laptop screen onto a big screen behind me, perhaps mixed with a few dainty trippy visuals. Since the laptop really is my instrument, at least they can see the crap going on the machine while the PA is pounding the audio. Not unlike watching someone's fingers moving across a fretboard.
Personally i don't think it makes much sense to play bassline, or a drum part, throughout the whole track, live. That's what a computer does well. You'd be better off creating live, semi-improvised, mixes of "modular" sound clips. Naturally, some cool controller, like a beachball wired with sensors and tossed into the crowd, can be effective. Also, just dancing wildly, in the booth/stage, can help however modesty sometimes prevents me from being over enthusiastic with my own music.
It all becomes worthwhile when, during a gig, you've put some combination of clips and efx together that you've never done before, step back, take a good listen, and think to yourself "damn! this sounds pretty good!"
-dean
If i had the resources i'd project my laptop screen onto a big screen behind me, perhaps mixed with a few dainty trippy visuals. Since the laptop really is my instrument, at least they can see the crap going on the machine while the PA is pounding the audio. Not unlike watching someone's fingers moving across a fretboard.
Personally i don't think it makes much sense to play bassline, or a drum part, throughout the whole track, live. That's what a computer does well. You'd be better off creating live, semi-improvised, mixes of "modular" sound clips. Naturally, some cool controller, like a beachball wired with sensors and tossed into the crowd, can be effective. Also, just dancing wildly, in the booth/stage, can help however modesty sometimes prevents me from being over enthusiastic with my own music.
It all becomes worthwhile when, during a gig, you've put some combination of clips and efx together that you've never done before, step back, take a good listen, and think to yourself "damn! this sounds pretty good!"
-dean
Ok, this is a similar "what should I be playing" issue, but from a different field, hopefully you get a bit of insight from it.
background
I'm doing stuff in theatre right now, the performer (not me) triggers all the visuals via sensors, floor-mounted sensors, light sensors .. all trigger scene changes and in-scene visuals. Its an actual story - it's not a 'light show'. I do the sounds (obviously)
fuck up
anyway - this week during a tech run-through the visual trigger app fucked up halfway through and it siezed up. The panel of viewers who happened to be in that rehearsal (theatre owner, booker, advisors, etc) were not impressed. They started saying 'is this show ready for the public?' , 'are you confident it will succeed?' ... etc.
what does the audience want?
it turns out they didn't even realise it was all triggered! they just thought it was a kind of weird stuck DVD.
I asked them - should we emphasise the triggers then, on an info sheet even?
answer - no that's lame, no-one cares about triggers, "its about the work itself, the technology is un-interesting "
I asked - should we ditch the triggers then and play a safe reliable DVD and make the actor work to the time of the DVD ?
answer - no way! the triggers are crucial!
so first off they say that they dont care about triggers and the trigger technology and dont want to be informed of it, second they say they do want the triggers involved they are crucial!
what is the outcome here, what is my deduction
people are deluded about these issues, if you ask their opinion on these things they say what they think, in fact they feel something opposite!
They may say they dont care about seeing a man stabbing at a trigger, but in fact they really want a big neon sign that says "the man is now triggering this drum" , "look, he hits this switch and this waaarb noise plays! " .
the audience actually want to see an obvious connection between the trigger and the event, despite saying they don't.
very odd
background
I'm doing stuff in theatre right now, the performer (not me) triggers all the visuals via sensors, floor-mounted sensors, light sensors .. all trigger scene changes and in-scene visuals. Its an actual story - it's not a 'light show'. I do the sounds (obviously)
fuck up
anyway - this week during a tech run-through the visual trigger app fucked up halfway through and it siezed up. The panel of viewers who happened to be in that rehearsal (theatre owner, booker, advisors, etc) were not impressed. They started saying 'is this show ready for the public?' , 'are you confident it will succeed?' ... etc.
what does the audience want?
it turns out they didn't even realise it was all triggered! they just thought it was a kind of weird stuck DVD.
I asked them - should we emphasise the triggers then, on an info sheet even?
answer - no that's lame, no-one cares about triggers, "its about the work itself, the technology is un-interesting "
I asked - should we ditch the triggers then and play a safe reliable DVD and make the actor work to the time of the DVD ?
answer - no way! the triggers are crucial!
so first off they say that they dont care about triggers and the trigger technology and dont want to be informed of it, second they say they do want the triggers involved they are crucial!
what is the outcome here, what is my deduction
people are deluded about these issues, if you ask their opinion on these things they say what they think, in fact they feel something opposite!
They may say they dont care about seeing a man stabbing at a trigger, but in fact they really want a big neon sign that says "the man is now triggering this drum" , "look, he hits this switch and this waaarb noise plays! " .
the audience actually want to see an obvious connection between the trigger and the event, despite saying they don't.
very odd
oh man we had some crazy bad things happen - usually due to one of the laptops (alwayus the PC 
haha) crashing - people shouting "hes got a virus" stick in my mind mid crash... also remember my power said it was running reserve only to realise i didnt have the power cable with me 
. ive had people spill beer on my laptop 
(luckily it was closed) , people press things on my controller before i come on , screwing all my settings 
incompetant sound engineers who think they know best. I remember DJn in london in a basment last summer whith no air con and the laptop wouldnt boot up cause of the heat, when i got home the screen was covered in large white marks - the salt from all the sweat dripping of me leanign over the laptop and of the roof . ive had people trip on my powercable pulling it of the table 
Still nothing as bad as having a party in my house for my 23rd and coming downstairs in the morning to find most of my CD collection out their boxes on my floor and the majority of my records out their sleeves on edges of tables and top of the tv etc etc - just as the sun was puring through the wondow melting almost all of them out of shape
My powerbook sure took a few knocks in its time... All great times though
haha) crashing - people shouting "hes got a virus" stick in my mind mid crash... also remember my power said it was running reserve only to realise i didnt have the power cable with me . ive had people spill beer on my laptop (luckily it was closed) , people press things on my controller before i come on , screwing all my settings incompetant sound engineers who think they know best. I remember DJn in london in a basment last summer whith no air con and the laptop wouldnt boot up cause of the heat, when i got home the screen was covered in large white marks - the salt from all the sweat dripping of me leanign over the laptop and of the roof . ive had people trip on my powercable pulling it of the table Still nothing as bad as having a party in my house for my 23rd and coming downstairs in the morning to find most of my CD collection out their boxes on my floor and the majority of my records out their sleeves on edges of tables and top of the tv etc etc - just as the sun was puring through the wondow melting almost all of them out of shape
My powerbook sure took a few knocks in its time... All great times though
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Tranquil010
- Posts: 97
- Joined: Thu Sep 22, 2005 12:22 am
- Location: Washington D.C.
- Contact:
Re: Live techno sucks (not)(follow-up)(and nightmare gig story!)
For special bonus points, a girl asked my (while I was in the middle of a fairly crucial filter-tweaking section) if I could play any Salsa. [/quote]
haha, thats killer dude... I had a great image of that while I was reading
haha, thats killer dude... I had a great image of that while I was reading
Powerbook 1.67 ghz running Live 5 ::: DP 1.8 G5 running Logic, Live 5, Reason and many plug ins.
MOTU interfaces, M-Audio Key's and Control Surfaces, Glyph HD's :: "Buy low, sell high" ::
MOTU interfaces, M-Audio Key's and Control Surfaces, Glyph HD's :: "Buy low, sell high" ::
cornelius = awesomesuburbanbather wrote:During a Cornelius show, one of the members held up a Boss SP202 sampler, faced it torwards the crowd and pressed some of the buttons in time to the music, "Cor-Cor---Cornelius" He then handed it to one of the people in the crowd and of course, a bunch of people were trying to grab the sampler and hit the buttons. Once he handed it over to the crowd the sounds coming out of the sampler was basically just a bunch of random sounds all at once. It was a mess, but it got the crowd worked up and literally had them involved in the performance. I'm shure Cornelius was completely prepared to say goodbye to that little sampler.pulsoc wrote:I am hoping on one part of my upcoming FIRST live performance with Live to just grab my Oxygen eight and hold it facing the audience as I smash booming oneshot samples in ya face!
i have the point dvd. he is a phenomenal songwriter/musician. ive seen super awesome footage of live shows too, using shadows and projections, where the words appear to be coming right out of his mouth. incredible stuff!
i used to be in a band. we used samplers and cds, but it was such a totally different experience having people moving and playing on stage. you can really play off the other folks in the band, instead of doing it all solo style. people tend to take the whole "band" concept more seriously cause theres like 4 guys with all this gear instead of one, so goofy raffles and whatnot pop up less often.
ive also had mcs get thouroughly pissed off when i tell them "no you cant flow over my tracks" i hate most mcs. they dont realize you have spent all this time actually making this music yourself, and you dont want their ghetto verbosities sprayed all over it. word.
i often wonder why laptopers dont project their screen so others can see what they are doing. on the one hand, there are people like the girlfriend that are just like "you sure do look busy." but if your doing dnb, techno, or any sort of experimental / laptop gigging, 3/4 of those folks are probably djs/producers themselves, cause thats how it goes, so dont underestimate your crowd.
that is unless its a catholic karate coffee rave raffle thing. then just get as much free food and coffee as you can. heh.