Electronic Music 411 - live shows, the j-chot way. -

I almost Religiously follow this one rule that xanopticon gave me after a particularly crushing failure I had as a promoter:

1.THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS AT THE END OF THE NIGHT IS WHAT CAME OUT OF YOUR SPEAKERS, AND WHAT THE AUDIENCE SAW.
(NEVER ADMIT A MISTAKE)

****WHAT?****
( your live set should be an adaptation of your produced tracks to a live environment. DON'T COMPROMISE YOUR MUSIC QUALITY FOR "real" or "improvisational" quality.) KEY WORD: COMPROMISE
***WHY?***
- you must find a happy medium between composition and improvisation. a MUSICIAN (keyboardist, saxaphonist, whatever) can sometimes work ENTIRELY in an improvisational manner, however, if you're a composer/producer, this simply won't work in a practical manner without years of prep and careful practice. even then, it might not be apparent or appreciated. Few if any people will realize the difference. oh, they'll realize that you're making it up as you go, if that's what you're doing completely, but rarely does it make a difference to the quality of performance. experimentation is fun, but most experiments are failures BUT none the less, oppertunities to learn and explore. this tends to reflect poorly on a stage. certain niche audiences (in portland for example) will appreciate live experimentation, but most don't. TRUST ME. I've tried both. ALOT.

2. IT'S NOT WORTH IT UNLESS YOU AND/OR THE AUDIENCE IS HAVING FUN. (both occurs at the BEST live shows)
-GIVE THEM A LITTLE SHOW. that's partially what they're there for. not alot. just enough. you don't need strippers and pyrotechnics. a screen onstage with some weird visuals might help. costumes are FUN!. wear silly glasses. bright pants. do something other than smoke smugly behind a laptop. hell, if you look like you're having a blast, you might not need any of that.

what I did personally was break down all my tracks into 3 or 4 key elements : rhythmic sounds, harmonic sounds, atonal/atmospheric sounds and vocal sounds. Then, I would basically mix, match fade, loop, crossfade, switch and manipulate combinations of these elements. Ableton is WONDERFULLY condusive for creative arrangement. so I basically ran 2 sets of 4 tracks (4 elements per song) and arranged them from slowest to fastest for the most fluid performance. this is alot easier than it sounds.

I basically made it difficult for me to fuck it up.
if I decided to aggressively remix a song on the fly, I could do that on a whim. the same if I decided to dance or act stupid while the track played out in it's entireity , or ape around while tweaking a delay, filter, or glitchy vst.

Hell, one time, half my set was a total fake peformance because my monitor went out. ( tweaking a dummy knob while a filter sweep occured, hit a useless button when a particular sound came in or changed. And when I wasn't doing that, I just plain acted like a possesed maniac) but I was drunk as hell and I remembered which buttons on the midi controller made the next songset play, so the show went on without stopping, or obviously troubleshooting, so THE SHOW WENT ON!

( LOOK LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.)

the really funny part about that was that my friends and peers and wife told me that was the best performance I ever did. I had a blast and the audience was captivated. only my friend jason and my wife realized I was faking. I had started out doing a dance set, and the daftpunk college fags had shuffled out mid-performance, (they had class the next day, chattanooga is a college town) I look up from what I'm doing at the audience maybe 3 times during an hour and a half set, and I noticed the audience had gone from 50 to 15 half way through, so I said fuck it, I'm gonna play my hardcore and have a blast. what I DIDN"T realise, was that during the course of me seemingly loosing my mind, a couple metal heads from the adjacent dive bar (part of the building) had wandered in and said HOLY CRAP, LOOK AT THAT GUY then went and got their friends bein' all like, "check this out!" .

I had no idea this was going on, so here's what I saw: look up before I start,
50 or so 18 to 20 year old hipsters.
look up 40 min in, 15 or so people
....then the thunderbird really kicked in and I did the spaz thing and was COMPLETELY oblivious to anything.
So much to my shock, when I finished and the lights came on, (exhausting 2 hour set) I was staring face to face with 60 or so drunken, ugly, old, young metal heads and bikers with their jaws on the floor, suddenly bursting into shouts and applause.
It was the single most personally/artistically gratifying thing I've ever done, completely unintentional.

so what did I learn?
1. don't play last when your audience has a bedtime.
2. even if you're playing music they don't particularly care about, if you are giving it your all and it looks like it, and if your fun rubs off on the audience (that sounded inappropriate)
people can still like or even love your performance.
3.thunderbird is a party in a bottle.
4. even people fairly or very experienced in electronic music production will hardly notice if you cheat. (within reasonable boundries)
5. showmanship IS REALLY IMPORTANT. present yourself how the audience might be the most receptive to, of course while staying true to your self and what you're comfortable doing. (I did this accidentally, but doofgoblin is REALLY fucking good at this)

so focus on creative arangement, rather than trying to do something you don't currently have the skillset for if you're a producer not a musician....and make it look good, act like you always ment to do it.