doot doot doot

[spacebug]

Went back to derby on Tuesday. It was fun to see folks again and meet some of the new girls. It's amazing how quickly one falls out of shape. When I'm skating consistently, I can tell the difference when I've missed one or two practices, and I hadn't skated in over a month, I think. So, yesterday my leggies were rubbery and today they're sore. And a couple blisters came back.


I've been spending a lot of time learning my gear and tweaking my music setup. One of the things that bothered me a lot about my set at CON, and my sets in general, is the time it takes me to change songs. There are a lot of little things under my old/current setup that I have to do between songs that, together, take an annoyingly long chunk of time. it's not *that* long, but dead air in a performance *feels* really long. I'm busy twisting knobs and getting things ready for the next thing, which also means I don't interact with my audience at all because I don't feel like I have time, and by the time I get everything ready, my thought is start making sound. now. and not hey, how's everybody doin'? This, I think, makes me a far less engaging performer than I know that I could be. Part of that is a confidence thing, too, but I think if my sets were more seamless it would help on both fronts.

There's also a culture of live electronic performance that performers tend to "get away" with not being engaging, which is an interesting discussion to me. It's kind of annoyingly accepted that electronic (especially laptop-based) performance is just going to be boring. It doesn't have to be, and, in my opinion, it *shouldn't* be. (I really fear that I'm a really boring act to watch, so I'm trying to improve that.) I have a few theories about why this is the case - the main one is that a lot of live electronic/laptop music performance is seen as close enough to DJing that it doesn't have to be considered a live performance, as a DJ often sits out of sight of anyone she's playing music for, up in a booth, left to her own devices. And, while I definitely appreciate the role of the DJ and the things that make a good dj set and the fact that the line between DJ and performer is ever more a gray one, DJ's are more exempt from needing to perform in the same way a live band does. Often, though, laptop musicians are playing their own music, on a stage. If you are *on a stage* I think it's a crime to not interact with the people watching you, to plunk along on a laptop that's ostensibly doing something related to the music when as far as your audience is concerned you may as well be surfing porn or checking your email. For example, I really love Cepia's music. It's creative and beautiful and I know he's doing interesting stuff and manipulating things live, but he should not be on a stage. He is boring to watch, because no one but him knows what he's doing with his software. I've also long thought that it would be really interesting to have the computer screen projected behind a laptop performer, but I don't know if that would only be interesting to me as an electronic music person. Another theory is that a lot of electronic music is created and performed by antisocial geek boys who are really *happier* in their basements with their bleepy toys than they are on stage, and it just comes through when they perform in front of people.

Well, anyway. That got longer than I anticipated.

Yesterday I unlocked the mystery of how to make Live send program changes to my synth *for* me to avoid a bunch of unnecessary knob twiddling. (WOO!) Now I'm experimenting with putting an entire set into one Live session file, and trying to learn to program my knob box to accomodate different sections of that one session. The way I do it now is to open a separate live file for every song, which takes time when I'm performing (No! I don't want to save, just open the next one! Go! Go!) Doing it that way also makes me pay attention to the laptop when I'm changing songs, which is another thing that causes death to the performance aspect of anything live and electronic. Doing anything tricky with MIDI tends to be a Herculean task, though, at least for me. This is mostly because of manuals that shove a complicated MIDI implementation chart at you without much explanation along with it and call it a day. I've been strangely in the mood to tackle this kind of thing, so I'm trying to take advantage of it while it lasts.



And, um, that's why I'm not further along on my album. Or my film score.

Comments

[azure-armand.livejournal.com]

In high school I had a Living Colour live album (I probably still have it) which is a rock band. Between songs, they had synth loops playing, that didn't necessarily have anything to do with the song but it made it more interesting while the band switched guitars or whatever. I thought it was a good idea.

Rock bands are pretty damn boring and repetitive too, unless they make an effort to be a bit theatrical. From more than a few feet away, strumming a guitar looks about as interesting as typing on a laptop. In a good band, someone, usually the frontman, has the job of talking to the crowd while the other guys tune, etc. Since you're solo its harder.

Doesn't S4 usually back you up doing video when you perform solo? While you set up, maybe he could cue something pre-recorded, that obviously isn't trying to pass itself off as your original music. Something that fits the aesthetic of your performance, like, say, clips from old sci-fi radio dramas or something.

Or, tape a video or sound recording of yourself. "While the real Caly is setting up, how's everybody doing? I'm taking a long time down there because I'm plugging in an old game boy from the 80s . . ." That would certainly get everybody's attention. Or you could use a recorded computer voice (think HAL 2000) to talk to the crowd and explain a little bit about how your gear works.

Can you tell I just drank a coffee?

[r4c.livejournal.com]

I have struggled with that problem for a loooooong time. I don't know that there's any easy answer. I think I've at least come to a happy middle ground between DJ'ing my live sets (mostly hands off) and interacting with my music in a way that the audience can see. I've tried to get away from interacting directly with the computer & instead interacting with a physical thing in order to control the direction of the music, effects, etc. It's not music I can perform completely live so I have had to make a compromise between enjoying it and having fun & focusing entirely on making the music happen. Having some sort of visual interest helps too. It allows the audience to focus more on that than on you, because as with anything highly technical, it requires a LOT of your attention and focus in order to keep things happening smoothly. We definetly come from the old school of electronic music performance. ;) I remember back in the day when you actually had to PLAY the music. Heh. On the plus side, computers allow us to make music in a dynamic, realtime way that wouldn't be possible otherwise. I do recall being pretty bummed out by bands that did track shows (remember the 80's & early 90's?) and I think that has stayed with me.

Putting all of my tracks, sound clips, effects, whathaveyou into one Live set has helped my transitions enormously. I've made use of Live's scene capability. Instead of waiting for it to load another set, I can just start playing the next song. I wish that Live had some way of keeping something playing when you start playing a new scene. It would be nice to be able to bridge things with some ambient stuff. Maybe in Live 6. Haven't made the upgrade as of yet.

[spacebug.livejournal.com]

Wooo, old school! Yeah, there's always a tradeoff. Track shows leave me vaguely dissatisfied too, even when the solo performances are really really solid (Fischer Spooner and Peaches are more recent acts that come to mind...)
I haven't upgraded to 6 yet, either.

Can't you remove the stop button from the slot in the scene below to keep stuff playing when you switch? I think you can, but I don't use scenes very much right now so I don't remember for sure. I might start using them a lot in The New Setup.

[r4c.livejournal.com]

Now that I think about it, removing the stop button is probably the answer. Thanks!

[spacebug.livejournal.com]

Yay, I knew a trick! I spent a long time working on putting a whole set into one big session file last night, and ended up using this all over the place. I'm definitely realizing the awesomeness of scenes. Another little useful thing - did you know if you use XXXBPM as the scene name it will automatically change to that tempo when you launch it? Neeeat!

[sarendipatree.livejournal.com]

Caly is teh smar!