thinks : is a good faker equivalent to a good performer?

[epsy]

I think that just the fact that faking a performance is an option for anybody that shows up to a gig with a laptop along with the lack of excitement over watching some guy twist a knob is what keeps electronic music from being taken seriously by crowds who would rather go out and watch a band play. Can't say I blame them really. It's still not as horrifying as when back in the 80's you'd have bands try to replace all their guitars with keytars and the drum kit with a bunch of octagon pads playing duran duran covers.

[Khazul]

I think if you going to do a good gig solo, then you need to do a bit of both - for the few gigs Ive done, I must confess to arranging the set so Im head down tweaking for some bits and and head up interacting for others and I allways have pre-programmed tweaks, transitions etc available if I want them for whatever reason instead of doing that particular bit live.

Part of it is because I know I dont have the long recent experience of doing live shows (its 20 years siince I was DJing) and want to make sure the punters are getting a good show regardless of how Im getting on with it.

IMHO gives you more options to fall back on depending upon the punters and how you yourself are feeling - sometimes you neeed to be more raw and tweaky, sometimes you need to be more interactive - have lots of pre-programmed stuff to fall back on gives you that space.

Maybe its different for the folks who do it full time, but for me - bloody hard sometimes getting in the mood after a crap day in a day job, so yes - I'll often cheat in the early part of a set until Ive relaxed enough and got into it and the punters are into it as well and its all flowing.

I guess for us folks using Live with our own music rather than just DJing - then I dont really feel that Im cheating in the way a DJ might be with someone elses CD - the difference is at the end of the day - Ive still created it all - the tradeoff is at the time I may choose what I do live vs whats pre-programmed. And yes - some of the pre-prgrammed sequences may be alot longer than a few bars of some tricky mix

Ive even done a pre-programmed DJ set before - it went down really well and I didnt even bother to pretend - and just danced with everyone else. The justifcation - the set had *alot* of near impossible to do live mixes/mashups in it, so even if I was doing it 'live' it would still have had to have alot of pre-progammed mixes in it.

The point is to put on a good gig - how you get there doesnt really matter as much as making the punters happy. Of course if its all pre-progammed and its still shit - well - maybe you should give up and do something else

The quetion I guess is - are you performing or putting on a show? IMHO performing is a self centered view - putting on a show for the punters is what you should be thinking about - so you do whatever it takes - for them.

[Nod]

OP: is a good faker equivalent to a good performer?

From the audiences perspective: yes. They've paid to be entertained and most are uncaring, and intentionally unaware, of the methods used to entertain them. However many will notice when something is 'wrong' and adjust their perceptions accordingly eg: like when the American Idol engineer has taken a $1k backhander/bonus to leave the hardware autotune off when the talented fat ugly girl sings - so that the talentless thin, pretty girl who can't can sell records for the corporation.

From the artists perspective: no. A fake, little more than the dancing monkey atop the organ grinder, belittles the work that genuine artists put into entertaining. Many will notice that something is 'wrong' - however artists understand that 'live art' involves the element of risk versus the skill/talent to put it right should it happen. Indeed it's that very risk, and controlling it with your talent, that arguably gives rise to the greatest, out on the edge, performances.

Now if you don't have the balls for the latter - you're a fake, or know someone who is - please award yourself, or them, the Milli Vanilli Grammy For Sucking Satan's Pecker/Too Gutless To Take The Stage Without My Crutch Award

[dj superflat]

to all the self-righteous responses: get over yourselves. i do everything truly live (only use stuff i've generated right then and there). but other "musicians" have different agendas. some just want to give everyone a good time, put on a good show. what's wrong with that? others just want to be cool, prominent in a given scene. perhaps not admirable, but understandable. you're entitled to prioritize certain aspects of being a musician, which will make you judge certain things other musicians do fairly harshly. but i don't think you can call them illegitimate. the line between show and performance art just isn't that obvious, some people's shows are more like art installations. i may be bored silly by some of the electro bands when they play live (who wants to see someone bang on some pads?), but lots of folk seem to like it.

do you judge people as harshly who don't play their own material? djs who just spin others discs? bands that play covers? cause that too doesn't wash, many of our greatest singers having been pure cover artists.

do you judge bands based on technical skill? isn't that related? aren't you just saying you admire the skill needed to do it live? so don't the maddest props go to the jazz guys or metalhead guitar shredders?

i used to scorn someone pressing play on a drum machine and then singing along. until i saw someone absolutely kill doing just that. at base, for me, it's all about the commitment, if you believe someone's performing the way they are as an aesthetic choice, rather than because they just can't find a band, or just can't write songs, or just don't have the chops to play the loops, etc. taking your limitations and turning them into strengths is something almost all the best musicians have done. i don't see it any different if it's remixing loops live, or beatmatching by a great dj that people love, or a hardcore band that can barely play 3 chords (this, from someone who used to feel the opposite, can play all instruments, write songs, sing, and tries to do everything live). if it works, it works, and that's all you need to ask.

[ethios4]

Then I discovered Psy Trance parties where I was astonished by sound quality complexity.....we, live performers will be frustred to not get that pre-made omnipresent "quality". But If you played live you know there is a very big difference when you can catch your public and i(e make them wait, twist their mind..) here they feel it's live and communication is complete compared to just crossfade betwen two tracks or simply adding a delay...

I know exactly what you mean!

Great thread!! The type of thread I only see on the Ableton forum.

[ciw]

Then I discovered Psy Trance parties where I was astonished
by sound quality complexity, but when they say it's a Live, it's just that the guy comes with his DAT or fucking ipod and just press play, then it's fake.

I'm currently working hard on properly live improvised psy. The band isn't ready yet. But we will be.

[andydes]

Interesting that so many people on the Ableton forum of all places are saying it doesn't matter too much. Isn't the whole point of this software to allow us to do things live that would have been impossible without it? Or at least very difficult and with racks of expensive equipment.

Obviously, doing anything with preprepared loops or sequenced parts from a computer takes some of the live element out of a performance. But the audience understands and accepts that. How much is really done live depends on the performer as there's a whole sliding scale, but I'd expect most of the audience would naturally expect the artist to have some control over the sound to be called Live. If they don't, and the audience found out, I think they'd feel cheated. And people who are just trying to get laid and don't care about the music at all are not the audience, they're just people who are there.

I saw the Bays on Saturday. They're a live dance act who apparently don't release any music and done write any tracks. Drummer, bassist and a guy with a computer and racks of equipemnt (I didn't get a very good look) playing techno, house and breaks. Everything is supposed to be improvised, but the guy on the equipment must have had a selection of loops and patches ready to play at whatever time he felt was right. So there was obviously a bit of preperation going on. The place was going nuts and you could tell that the audience really appreciated the fact that it was basicially a live jam. Quality act. It definately made me think about what you can do with live dance music.

[b0unce]

Interesting that so many people on the Ableton forum of all places are saying it doesn't matter too much. Isn't the whole point of this software to allow us to do things live that would have been impossible without it?

maybe they should change it's name to 'Ableton Lazy'

[Angstrom]

Interesting that so many people on the Ableton forum of all places are saying it doesn't matter too much. Isn't the whole point of this software to allow us to do things live that would have been impossible without it? Or at least very difficult and with racks of expensive equipment.

Obviously, doing anything with preprepared loops or sequenced parts from a computer takes some of the live element out of a performance. But the audience understands and accepts that. How much is really done live depends on the performer as there's a whole sliding scale, but I'd expect most of the audience would naturally expect the artist to have some control over the sound to be called Live.

I think you are misunderstanding.

Most people would like to play their music and have the audience understand it is being created. But you cannot rely on the audience to know.

Although it seems obvious to you that you are triggering patterns, turning EQs on and off, sending effects, all that the audience see is a man who convincingly looks like he believes in what he is doing. That small thing is all that convinces them you are legit. You, looking like you are doing something, convincingly.


Nobody knows what the hell you are doing
A while back, a friend of mine said to me "I have no idea what you are doing up there, but it sure looks intense". I was baffled - to me my Full Body Knob Turns™ were quite obviously related to the big obvious filter sweep. But it wasn't obvious to them (and many others), it was just a weird body movement!

I started asking around, and sure enough - no-one really knew what I was doing. Unless you make a big stupid mistake .. no-one knows if you are controlling the drums or what the hell you are doing!

You may think that musicians will know .. not the case

I dont know how much Liam Howlett actually does live, I worked on their shows in Sydney in the mid 90s and there were a fuck load of synths and I know they loaded up a lot of presets, but whether they were just sequenced with little done to them I dont actually know - and I was on the local crew

having said all that, pitch black were impressive - but they could have been tweaking imaginary knobs for all I knew - they gave a good performance but I definitely wouldnt know from the front if it was real if I didn't already know

and that is from someone who knows the electronic music world.

To people not educated in the means of production, your 'Live performance' is equivalent to a good fake.

Lets draw a parallel:
Think of a medium which you are unfamiliar with the production of, but are familiar with the product - lets say "C++ coding". Now , if I showed you a man hunched over a screen full of C++ . I ask you 'what is this man doing?' - you would not be able to say "coding a filter" or "bug checking", due to your unfamiliarity with the medium. All you know is - he looks concentrated and therefore (most likely) sincere. You can only answer in the most general terms - "He is programming"

But he may as well be just pretending - because you can only rely on interpreting his basic physical cues. You do not have the expertise to judge (the only people that do are other coders)

Now lets say we hire this guy, and we say to him "Make me a Butterworth Filter VST" and sure enough after a day hidden in a room he gives us our Butterworth filter VST.
We got what we asked for off him, we have our product in hand and are happy. Where did he get the code from ? Who knows.

What more can we ask for?
We do not have the knowledge as customers to ask for more, we received exactly what we asked for.

I am not saying "We can all fake it"
I am saying : consider how to raise your game ... it is not by triggering more clips and sending more effects. No one knows what you are doing there. Think about the ways that a faker could beat you. Think about what an audience actually wants in terms of audio and physical entertainment. Supply those.

[barry tone]

great thread and one with no end i think! wanted to add two things

first is a quote from someone who ran back of house production at a theatre i think. can't rememebr where i read it went (roughly)

"95% of what we do is for the 5% of people who notice it"

second is Jamie Lidell's live set at the big chill in 2006. live band combined with his usual studio gizmos - amazingly live and totally blew me away.

[Angstrom]

second is Jamie Lidell's live set at the big chill in 2006. live band combined with his usual studio gizmos - amazingly live and totally blew me away.

Yes, I saw Jamie for the first time at this gig in 2004 and was blown away,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/music/20 ... ndex.shtml
it gave me hope in live electronic music.

Afterwards I was raving to a few friends about it, going on about the many moments of genius. But, out of the 15 friends who saw it only one other person thought it was good !
That person was also in a Techno act, while all the other friends were in TV, Construction, Dance, etc etc.

The next time Jamie was in town they all went to see Sasha instead.


Sadly Jamie has gone too Jamiroquai for me now. I prefer the crazy stuff over the retread soul stuff

[starving student]

watching jamie do his gospel stuff is blow milk through your nose funny,

this is a great thread, I really think you hit the bulls eye with the word convincing Angstrom, I don't agree with how stupid everybody thinks the audience is, like you said there are electronic musicians that don't know what's real and what is not. I think the basic fan has more experience watching what we do than we do, and I think the basic fan has more of a connection to the aura of the music on the receiving end than we do on the providing end. I think they see us and I think they know what's going on, not by knowing the ins and outs of the controllers we use but because they have a direct link to what is convincing. it's all about communication and if we looked confused then they become confused and if we look like we are having a good dialogue with the music then so do they as well with us, it's all synergy, so a good fake might be fake but it also might be real in this way, the faker might be a great translater and that might work, or the faker might really be feeling the music and still able to translate that convincingly, there have been rock bands faking like that for decades.

[andydes]

I think you are misunderstanding.

Most people would like to play their music and have the audience understand it is being created. But you cannot rely on the audience to know.

Although it seems obvious to you that you are triggering patterns, turning EQs on and off, sending effects, all that the audience see is a man who convincingly looks like he believes in what he is doing. That small thing is all that convinces them you are legit. You, looking like you are doing something, convincingly.


Nobody knows what the hell you are doing
A while back, a friend of mine said to me "I have no idea what you are doing up there, but it sure looks intense". I was baffled - to me my Full Body Knob Turns™ were quite obviously related to the big obvious filter sweep. But it wasn't obvious to them (and many others), it was just a weird body movement!

I started asking around, and sure enough - no-one really knew what I was doing. Unless you make a big stupid mistake .. no-one knows if you are controlling the drums or what the hell you are doing!

....

I am not saying "We can all fake it"
I am saying : consider how to raise your game ... it is not by triggering more clips and sending more effects. No one knows what you are doing there. Think about the ways that a faker could beat you. Think about what an audience actually wants in terms of audio and physical entertainment. Supply those.

No, I think I do understand what your saying, and I agree that it isn't obvious to the majority of the audience what you are doing.

I also know that pulling off the most impressive sequence of improvised clip lunches and effect madness will go unnoticed in most cases.

But I don't think the audience needs to know exactly how what you're doing is affecting the music, only that it is. It might not matter so much if you're a support act or low down the pecking order in a festival. But if people are paying money to see you play, I think you'd better try and do something.

I'm sure most people here could do a much better set if it was completely preprepared, but jumping around twisting knobs and dials that do nothing isn't on in my opinon. And I think it's more than just playing for yourself or not knowing what else to up there.

It's quite possible to totally fake playing in a rock band, but if you get found out, then your credibilty goes completely down the pan. I don't see why it should be different with electronic music.

[Angstrom]

But if people are paying money to see you play, I think you'd better try and do something.
I'm sure most people here could do a much better set if it was completely preprepared, but jumping around twisting knobs and dials that do nothing isn't on in my opinon.

I still think you are missing my point.

I am not saying "fake it" or "do nothing" - I am saying that to improve a live show you should consider what a faker scores highly on (audience interaction, tightness, etc) - and improve there. Stop concentrating on how many clips you can trigger, but what does it really achieve for the audience.
If you are doing something you ought to do the right things, rather than just 'as many things as possible' .

There's a lot of actions that electronic performers make which merely serve to satisfy themselves and not the audience. For example - the common beginners mistake of triggering lots of clips and embarking on a 20 minute BeatRepeat mangle of 150 different songs might make you feel like you were busy and therefore valid - but it may not convey much to the audience. But if we take that work ethic and direct it toward the audience, don't aim to be as busy as you can possibly be, but as effective (and affecting) as you can be.

For example :
If there is a section in your set where you don't really need to do much ... don't pretend to be intensely just about to press a button, or do that silly little dance of "touch all the controls one after another" - as if to make sure they are still there, or rest your fingers on 8 faders without moving them - like you are transmitting your thoughts directly to the desk. Fuck that! Go for a quick wander instead, glad-hand the crowd if they are up for it, break down some barriers.
And when it's time to leap back in it will be all the more effective and obvious that NOW you are dong something. Honest, this works.

It isn't a crime to have a minute to enjoy the show, but many electronic performers act as if it is and maintain the same introverted constipated intensity throughout the whole show. A faker wins over an introvert here, because a 'faker' feels the crowd and gives them attention ... because that is the totality of their act!


IF you are going to play real , then BE real. Accept that at certain times the machines will get along just fine without you and Enjoy those moments

[djadonis206]

great discussion because not even 6 or 7 years ago you we possibly couldn't even be having this discussion technology as advanced so much in that time period

live electronic musicians were just firing sequences off with the MPC if they wanted to play live

we can thank ableton and a hot of other developers like Max and the such for allowing us to even have this discussion

think about it