monkeyboy wrote:I just wrote a post about this on my blog having spent a night watching four very different live electronic performances.
You can read the whole thing here
In short, I came up with four things that I think are important to agood live electronic performance:
1. Don't hide behind a table and a laptop. This might not be possible but I think it just creates a barrier between you and the audience that puts you at an immediate disadvantage. Even just turning the table diagonally so its not straight across helps I think.
2. Set up your laptop/controller high. Again, difficult if you're at the mercy of the venue but setting things up high enough to be standing up rather than hunched over your laptop helps to give you a stage presence rather than hunched over in the classic electronic musician email checking pose.
3. Get a mic. This is something that I've noticed from some hip hop DJs like DJ Z-Trip. Even if there's no singing or MCing in your set, just saying 'hi' at the start and 'thanks' if people cheer and clap makes a connection with the audience that just isn't there something with electronic music performances.
4. At least give the illusion of spontaneity. This is vital I think. If people feel like you really could be checking your emails whilst playing a CD then you're on to a loser with the casual observer. If you're sweating profusely, hitting buttons and tweaking knobs and somehow making it sound as though this is being contructed before your very eyes, this energy will be transferred to the audience pretty quickly. How to do this? I'm not sure yet but you instantly know it if you see/hear it.
I'm just getting to the point of putting together a live set at the moment so I've been thinking a lot about this lately and that night really rammed home these things.
Yes, but the flipside of this is that we, as techno-musos, are the worst placed to judge it the entertainment value.For the time being, a lone laptop is the ultimate in elitist musicianship. The background knowledge that the audience requires to appreciate the sounds is the same as watching a chess tournament. If you don't know the rules of chess, it gets stale pretty quick.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 78,00.html... Forced by video to "remove their blinders," as Berger puts it, many patients notice that their facial expressions can put people off. A TV scriptwriter being treated watched a tape of herself made during a group session, then dissolved in tears. "What bothered me," she told Berger, "was this smug expression I have on my face—as if I know it all"
yep, I agree that being "cold an aloof" is a valid stage performance - just as valid as leaping around like a grinning buffoon. Because it adds depth to the show - if the person genuinely conveys 'weird introvert' to the audience then is adding that human message to the music that people go to see music "live" forlandrvr1 wrote: Being emotionally cold and detached myself, I can relate. I love those acts in which the performers are so incredibly obtuse and/or uncomfortable that they can barely look at the audience - let alone interact.
God forbid they should start dancing.
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In interesting notion, but ENTIRELY dependent upon which audience is listening. If you're at an experimental music gig, no worries. At an art gallery? You're golden. Coffee house? Probably okay. $1 Bud Light Nite at Ted's? You're fucked.gjm wrote:For the time being, a lone laptop is the ultimate in elitist musicianship. The background knowledge that the audience requires to appreciate the sounds is the same as watching a chess tournament.
Angstrom wrote:Even if someone conveys a deep sense of psychological illness and introverted mania, they have at least added human drama (of some kind) to the show. better that than just "I'm a bit busy"
I agree with you. I focused in on a laptop for simplicity. I am just trying to highlight the point that the program Live, or any other is not what 'gets played, manipulated' in time and space. If you play a MIDI keyboard controller, and a non music type sees you do it, they associate a level of skill and musicianship more readily as they watch you play, as opposed to all of the 'other stuff' ie programming you did behind closed doors.Pitch Black wrote:I'd disagree. If I am playing a keyboard MIDI controller, the keyboard is the instrument, I just happened to have programmed it earlier using a computer and software.gjm wrote:I say again, Live is not the instrument, The Laptop is the instrument, which uses Live.
If you get my drift...
Pitch Black wrote:I believe it is me, a human, that generates the music. In this way I believe the computer or the gear is analogous to the novelist's typewriter - the typewriter records the novelists output, It doesn't tell him what story to tell.
"?????" = "all the phrases and sentences the novelist ever heard or read in his life". i.e. input received, that one day, with a bit of imagination, may be incorporated into the novelists output. Those random sounds and arps and things can serve as provocations to something original if the musician applies their imagination and says something new with them, in the same way a novelist might hear or read a line and it starts him off in a direction. But if the novelist suffers from a failure of imagination, then he will output regurgitated stuff verbatim - which has almost no chance of being hailed as "new", "interesting", or "original".tempus3r wrote:Computers do not make the music, they are just tools.
However it is not technically accurate as an alalogy in that a typewriter has no button to push to generate words, many software apps do have buttons to generate sequences (arpeggiators) and random sound creation presets and things.
Arpeggiator is to DAW/VSTi as ????? is to Typewriter?
Pitch Black wrote:We have ended up with a situation where people - musicians and punters alike - place too much emphasis on the "how", rather that the "what" and the "why" of music - the latter two are far more interesting questions IMHO. I'd liken it to: so you are now fluent in a new language, but what do you actually have to say?
The "how" IS less interesting!tempus3r wrote: I tend to agree with you here. However, how is it that you think the "how" is less interesting, yet went through the trouble to make a video of your live setup and post on youtube?
It's down to the human! What do they have to say/to convey/to share with us, the audience? That's what audiences [ie non-music geeks] take away in the end. People come back from a gig and say "they were brilliant!" rather than "the Marshall cabinets were brilliant". The gear is just the tools as many have said.Also the bit about not taking your bed onstage, I almost did this! But it was a bit impracticial at the time.To me the laptop is just another musical tool and the only reason why I am using it on stage is the simple fact that it is a portable supercomputer, capable of replacing huge racks of hardware.
Yes, that's my point. Which goes back to the performing artist considering his audience, and in particular their impression of him and his music. What do they perceive?landrvr1 wrote:In interesting notion, but ENTIRELY dependent upon which audience is listening. If you're at an experimental music gig, no worries. At an art gallery? You're golden. Coffee house? Probably okay. $1 Bud Light Nite at Ted's? You're fucked.gjm wrote:For the time being, a lone laptop is the ultimate in elitist musicianship. The background knowledge that the audience requires to appreciate the sounds is the same as watching a chess tournament.
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In general: spot on, especially #1 & 2.monkeyboy wrote:
In short, I came up with four things that I think are important to agood live electronic performance:
1. Don't hide behind a table and a laptop. This might not be possible but I think it just creates a barrier between you and the audience that puts you at an immediate disadvantage. Even just turning the table diagonally so its not straight across helps I think.
2. Set up your laptop/controller high. Again, difficult if you're at the mercy of the venue but setting things up high enough to be standing up rather than hunched over your laptop helps to give you a stage presence rather than hunched over in the classic electronic musician email checking pose.
3. Get a mic. This is something that I've noticed from some hip hop DJs like DJ Z-Trip. Even if there's no singing or MCing in your set, just saying 'hi' at the start and 'thanks' if people cheer and clap makes a connection with the audience that just isn't there something with electronic music performances.
4. At least give the illusion of spontaneity. This is vital I think. If people feel like you really could be checking your emails whilst playing a CD then you're on to a loser with the casual observer. If you're sweating profusely, hitting buttons and tweaking knobs and somehow making it sound as though this is being contructed before your very eyes, this energy will be transferred to the audience pretty quickly. How to do this? I'm not sure yet but you instantly know it if you see/hear it.
Yep, I agree with the idea of innate talent in all it's forms. Some folks are just naturals. Some folks have charisma; no matter what they do, other people find it interesting.heavensdaw wrote:Reading through this thread makes me think, of a phrase that I heard a long time ago. 'you've either got it or you haven't'
Some people just 'have it', They instinctively know how to entertain..
If you don't just 'have it' that's where it gets complicated.. I'm not talking musically here... just 'having it' that instinct of performance.. Of course it can be learned, but imo it is never the same as when somebody just does it 'naturally'
There's NO bloody rules!
Hd