youtube : the most live idm ever

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 4:57 pm

LL wrote:
bencodec wrote:dude, this kid is weak, i can do that too, without even having to touch the keyboard.

If that's a joke, it's a good one; if not, I think you're missing the point?

hehe

kabuki · Post by **kabuki** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 5:14 pm

IDM always loses me. I think its interesting that the Laptop Battles always turn into an IDM showcase. Laptop Battle, Laptop Deathmatch (here in Dallas), etc. IDM.

I prefer glitch for the weird stuff. At least the beats go somewhere and the song has structure.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 5:16 pm

yeah... and whats up with jazz music? no structure at all...

davec1 · Post by **davec1** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 6:17 pm

maybe I'm gonna offend somebody now, but to me that stuff sounded random. it's not possible to tell the end product from what comes out if you give a chimp a midi controller keyboard.

Maybe it's my untrained ears and ignorance, but I fail to see the beauty and skill in that.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 6:42 pm

davec1 wrote:maybe I'm gonna offend somebody now, but to me that stuff sounded random. it's not possible to tell the end product from what comes out if you give a chimp a midi controller keyboard.

Maybe it's my untrained ears and ignorance, but I fail to see the beauty and skill in that.

I hear it and it sounds like he knows exactly what he's doing. The jazz analogy is a good one, there definitely is structure, but it's probably more like
-intro is noise
-move into some beats
-noise
-different beats
-FX
-noise
-beats
-noise
-finish

but that's a MUCH performance that's MUCH more in touch with the audience than a DJ going from loop to loop or song to song, he was actually PLAYING notes, no quantisation.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 6:49 pm

davec1 wrote:maybe I'm gonna offend somebody now, but to me that stuff sounded random. it's not possible to tell the end product from what comes out if you give a chimp a midi controller keyboard.

Maybe it's my untrained ears and ignorance, but I fail to see the beauty and skill in that.

yeah you're right. there is absolutely not skill in improvisation......

like jazz ya know? terrible music cause it's just all random and stuff.

(taste the sarcasm please)

kabuki · Post by **kabuki** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 6:59 pm

Johnisfaster wrote:
davec1 wrote:maybe I'm gonna offend somebody now, but to me that stuff sounded random. it's not possible to tell the end product from what comes out if you give a chimp a midi controller keyboard.

Maybe it's my untrained ears and ignorance, but I fail to see the beauty and skill in that.
yeah you're right. there is absolutely not skill in improvisation......

like jazz ya know? terrible music cause it's just all random and stuff.

(taste the sarcasm please)

I get that there is improvisation. I improvises with my ass every time I farts. Doesn't mean it's any more enjoyable. Smell the sarcasm, please.

Jazz has chords, melody, a key... and a structure of SOME kind. That's not even a stretch for me to find one. I can't, for the life of me, find squat resembling a musical structure or a tune in it. (I have heard some ultra-fast Drum and Bass that some might consider IDM, but it was just really fast DnB.)

If they called it "Improvizational Noise Music" instead of "INTELLIGENT Dance Music", I would at least get where they are going with it. I see neither intellegence nor danceability in it. They could call it Texas Two-Step and it would be about as fitting as IDM.

Just my opinion.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 7:07 pm

kabuki wrote:
Johnisfaster wrote:
davec1 wrote:maybe I'm gonna offend somebody now, but to me that stuff sounded random. it's not possible to tell the end product from what comes out if you give a chimp a midi controller keyboard.

Maybe it's my untrained ears and ignorance, but I fail to see the beauty and skill in that.
yeah you're right. there is absolutely not skill in improvisation......

like jazz ya know? terrible music cause it's just all random and stuff.

(taste the sarcasm please)
I get that there is improvisation. I improvises with my ass every time I farts. Doesn't mean it's any more enjoyable. Smell the sarcasm, please.

Jazz has chords, melody, a key... and a structure of SOME kind. That's not even a stretch for me to find one. I can't, for the life of me, find squat resembling a musical structure or a tune in it. (I have heard some ultra-fast Drum and Bass that some might consider IDM, but it was just really fast DnB.)

If they called it "Improvizational Noise Music" instead of "INTELLIGENT Dance Music", I would at least get where they are going with it. I see neither intellegence nor danceability in it. They could call it Texas Two-Step and it would be about as fitting as IDM.

Just my opinion.

'They' don't like the term IDM for the same reasons.
Jazz is not always about the chart, 'learn all your theory, shut up and play.' I went to a jazz performance where they played from the plot of an atom being smashed, each performer picked a particle and followed its path outward.

Like you said, it's opinion, I hear where you're coming from, there can be a fine line between noise and music. I err on the side of having no line.

kabuki · Post by **kabuki** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 7:29 pm

Tone Deft wrote:Like you said, it's opinion, I hear where you're coming from, there can be a fine line between noise and music. I err on the side of having no line.

Well put.

That said, at least the kid in the vid was hammering out some good beats. I would have liked to hear him put those beats on a glitched out melody or vocal. The local IDM guys just twiddle some knobs on a loop they wrote and bang their heads. It's like watching someone go into a elpileptic fit while checking their email.

Gyu · Post by **Gyu** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 8:02 pm

That's my mate Ned!!!!!!!! (well, I know him, not that well)
I was in that battle in an earlier round. (Got beaten straight away)
Anyway, Ned's got skills! That round is a little random for me but check out his earlier rounds, fucking cool beats.

davec1 · Post by **davec1** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 9:41 pm

yeah you're right. there is absolutely not skill in improvisation......

like jazz ya know? terrible music cause it's just all random and stuff.

(taste the sarcasm please)

I did not say that, as an attentive reader would have grasped. Far from it.

I do have a problem with experimental art in general, though; I appreciate the thought, the concept that (sometimes) people bother to think up before doing what they do; but very often the product is so beyond my aesthetic horizons that I'm maybe interested and intrigued by the idea for 30 seconds, then I get bored and move on.

But maybe that's just my attention span...

I don't know this guy and didn't even finish to watch the video, so no disrespect to him.

but there's just too many lazy artists out there too lazy to actually first learn the rules before they break them. Then they pride themselves on their avantguarde mindset....

but enough intellello-bashing, each to whatever rocks their boat

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:00 pm

davec1 wrote:
and didn't even finish to watch the video,

maybe thats part of the problem.

sorry i was being sarcastic earlier, sometimes I find sarcasm as a great way of getting a point accross but sometimes it's not.

alls I'll say is that you don't need to understand the rules of anything in order to DO. if you put some heart into what you are doing then someone else out there is bound to understand it. this artist shows acceptional keyboard drumming skills. his song writing isn't the skill, it's his keyboard drumming and on the fly tweaking that is the skill and thats all that you should be paying attention to because it's a virtuoso act not a "listen to my pretty song" act.

he won the show cause people liked watching him, not because his songs were better. listen to other videos from that same battle and you'll see that some of the other artists sounded better.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:02 pm

john - this ll reminds me of a thread you started about a crowd going nuts when you just applied a live effect for a few seconds. it really does make a huge difference when people perceive that the performer has a direct 'in the moment' connection with the music. I would encourage you to develop those FX during your set to keep that vibe going.

Spiralgroove · Post by **Spiralgroove** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:05 pm

dude looks like he is having fun

id like to see him step it up a bit and drop in some sequenced stuff too

a little quantization never hurt nobody

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:27 pm

I totally dig what he's doing. Not in the sense that I'd "buy the album", but because it is showing the tendency to be live-oriented in electronica.

I personally dig the work of the looping community. Loads of really experimental artists like Andre LaFosse create elegant glitchy real-time masterpieces while under more or less full control. And then you can really hear the structure.