A Very Un-Inspiring set Seen on mpc/ turntables

[leisuremuffin]

If I want to listen to the music I can do it at home in the comfort of my office.

I don't want to pay to see a bunch of people stand around and mimic studio albums while appearing for all intents and purposes to be puppets on strings.

Aha! neither do i. And that's how I judge a performance:

1) Did the performer play something differrent than what was on the record?

2) was the performance "acrobatic" or in other words, was there the possibility of failure? Were they taking risks? This is important to me because if the performance is obviously pre-coded it's boring.

3) is the performer being honest with the audience? What i mean here is, do they believe and feel what they are doing, and are they doing it in a natural and unforced manner. This is very important to me.



you see, to me, performance (for a musician, or group of musicians) still means the act of performing music....

but ya'll can enjoy your lights and penis-pump shows if you like...



.lm.

[leisuremuffin]

... a better performance
would have helped their performance imensley...

Well, that's infallible logic right there. I agree. A better performance would have certainly helped their perfomance. Where's the arguement?

thanks, i didn't want to be the one to say it.



.lm.

[EgAD]

... a better performance
would have helped their performance imensley...

Well, that's infallible logic right there. I agree. A better performance would have certainly helped their perfomance. Where's the arguement?

if that's been my point all of these 5 or 6 pages than how infallible is it really.
oh yeah, the argument....... it's in these pages.

[chrysalis33rpm]

It is not about how it looks. It is about the passion you have while doing it.

+1

In that case, meet William Hung, vocalist of the year (or was that last year?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwMjpt62Ja4

Paula agrees with you.
Simon disagrees with you.
Randy agrees that his attempt is fun but his talent is laughable.

Exactly. I've always suspected that I was never meant to appear on American Idol.

[dys4ik]

you see, to me, performance (for a musician, or group of musicians) still means the act of performing music....

but ya'll can enjoy your lights and penis-pump shows if you like...

Why do you act like the two are mutually exclusive?

I want to hear good music as well as see something interesting. Otherwise, I can listen to it at home.

[chrysalis33rpm]

I don't think they are mutually exclusive, I think the OP has made some very good points and raised an interesting question. But his language is undeniably focused on the visual impressions of the performance, which doesn't help his arguement, at least for me.

My point is not that visuals are unimportant, but that it is the passionate involvement of the performer in the moment by moment creation of the art which is FELT by the audience. So if your work is about passionate midi-driven penis pumps, have a great time. My passion happens to be more in the corner of a warehouse freaking out waving vinyl around- not to put on a show, but because it feels like the only way to express what rock and roll IS. I prefer to be on the same level as the dance floor, visual contact is important to carry people along. I am not an entertainer, I am a conduit.

I think that lm's concept of risk and possiblity of failure is very important. It's risk which gives a charge to a perfomance, the audience can feel it, it demands everything the performer has, its electrifying. Risk makes us feel that we are, in fact, alive.

[leisuremuffin]

i just wanted to say penis-pump again.

check out "purple organ" for the cutting edge in penis-pump driven performance. (he's actually pretty good, i'm not into the style of music so much, but it is pretty cool, hes got a guitar that has a little mic in it that drives an amp connected to a snare so he can play a snare over his stuff. kinda one man band thing)




.lm.

[stale bread]

of course the OP's focus was the visual performance, that was what his whole post was about, now it's you who is using infallible logic right there.
you guys just didn't want to let the op talk about performance only, even though its clear he wasn't in the least talking about the sound/music in his first post.

[stale bread]

it was a good discussion but he could have talking about just the gear they were using, or just the venue in which they were playing, or just the music, or any other aspect, instead he was talking about the correlation that we laptop performers often make to performers using hardware, and pointing out that even they can suffer from the bad performance usualy associated with laptop artist. I don't know why it was so hard to get but whatever, there is alot of the obvious being pointed out in this thread.

[leisuremuffin]

1) we're talking about a musical group.


2) op talks about visual aspect of performance.


3) link is made between quality of musical group and visual performance. (at the very least this is implied)


4) another party says that in hir opinion visual aspect is not relevant.


5) fact that multiple perspectives exist not questioned, perspectives clarified thru conversation.


6) somebody else says something, but not much.







.lm.

[Spindrift]

They should make a bit more upbeat music and get a Bez and the'll have a show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Q88fkBH8w

[stale bread]

egad i get it don't worry about it, everybody knows about the lack of performance ethics associated with laptop djs ie: looking like we're checking email or playing winamp/itunes this issue is nothing new, leisuremuffin is just being a dick and insecure about it, I guess he wants people to just close their eyes when they go see him perform, maybe he performs music for meditation but i digress, no worries there. thanks for the clip, it proves your point well, unfortunately if you took all of the stones instruments away
and replaced them with nothing but laptops people would most likely be attributing the lack of a worthy performance to the fact that they were using laptops so it would seem that there is a bias in the population at large over this subject matter, but that doesn't negate the fact that artist such as ourselves do need to find better ways of conveying our passion. Hopefully the next 5 years will provide us with more intresting ways to tweak cut off and rez and help us make that connection with the listeners standing in front of us that every good performer seeks to obtain. I myself would like to see more ribbon controllers in the tools we use and more innovation in the way of ergonomics in the development of the next crop of midi controllers. anyway good thread.

[leisuremuffin]

very funny, if your idea of musical performance is tweaking filter cutoff and resonance you're already beyond help. You better get some sort of show to distract the dummies.

ribbon controllers? we already have those, and about a million other things you can use. Does it matter what it looks like? It could be the coolest controller in the world and it won't do shit for you if it isn't set up in a way that you can elegantly perform with it. Of course when i say perform, i mean make music.

You can fool an idiot into thinking you're great by controlling a filter cutoff with a light beam controller, but it takes a little bit more than that to touch a more intelligent audience.




.lm.

[leisuremuffin]

PS go fuck yourself, toy.



.lm.

[chrysalis33rpm]

egad i get it don't worry about it, everybody knows about the lack of performance ethics associated with laptop djs ie: looking like we're checking email or playing winamp/itunes this issue is nothing new, leisuremuffin is just being a dick and insecure about it, I guess he wants people to just close their eyes when they go see him perform, maybe he performs music for meditation but i digress, no worries there. thanks for the clip, it proves your point well, unfortunately if you took all of the stones instruments away
and replaced them with nothing but laptops people would most likely be attributing the lack of a worthy performance to the fact that they were using laptops so it would seem that there is a bias in the population at large over this subject matter, but that doesn't negate the fact that artist such as ourselves do need to find better ways of conveying our passion. Hopefully the next 5 years will provide us with more intresting ways to tweak cut off and rez and help us make that connection with the listeners standing in front of us that every good performer seeks to obtain. I myself would like to see more ribbon controllers in the tools we use and more innovation in the way of ergonomics in the development of the next crop of midi controllers. anyway good thread.

I also thought it was a pretty interesting thread and am looking forward to controllers which resemble the synergy of traditional musical instruments more closely (who isn't?!). I don't really see any reason to go off on lm, he certainly contributed many interesting points of view as well - in most discussions it takes a dialectic (that's 2 opposing points of view) to further the conversation. I still haven't heard a convincing answer to the question "So why was the Hot Chip video better than the Stones video?", other than, "It's the music, stupid!" And I think it's very important question which interests us all (thank you for bringing it up Egad).

But, Bread, one person who really didn't contribute much of anything to the discussion, until your last couple sentences (which were on point), was you.

I'm still a little concerned now that it has been revealed that lm is a knucklebutt.