IDM Mailing Archive

quoted 8 lines A friend of mine and I went to

> A friend of mine and I went to > the Chemical Brothers show this past weekend, and upon seeing that > the music was being generated by two 'mad professor' types bobbing > their heads to the beats and twiddling knobs and pushing buttons on > stacks of black boxes, she asked me 'What exactly are they doing?'. And > I must admit, I didn't really know. So I put it to someone out > there, when a techno act perform 'live', what are they really > doing? Assume I know very little about the current technology.

i was at that show and i think they weren't doing much of anything except bobbing their heads to the beats. i think most of it was being played back off of a tape. the only time i saw anything that remotely resembled live performance was when one of them tapped on a sampler that triggered the "uh!" sound in "chemical beats". techno acts vary in their approach... some use mostly taped material. some bring all the gear but have the computer play it back. some actually make it up live on the spot. single cell orchestra has a good system - he has a few drum machines and a synth or two. he starts patterns running on the various pieces and mixes between them, rather like a DJ mixing between two records. so although all the pieces of the show are recorded ahead of time, how he mixes them and manipulates them is tailored according to the crowd reaction. -j-

quoted 7 lines techno acts vary in their approach... some use mostly taped material. some

>techno acts vary in their approach... some use mostly taped material. some >bring all the gear but have the computer play it back. some actually make it >up live on the spot. single cell orchestra has a good system - he has a few >drum machines and a synth or two. he starts patterns running on the various >pieces and mixes between them, rather like a DJ mixing between two records. >so although all the pieces of the show are recorded ahead of time, how he >mixes them and manipulates them is tailored according to the crowd reaction.

I think this is the easiest way for a techno act to perform - record everything in advance on some kind of multi-track recorder, then mix in the different channels live. This way you don't have to bring a bunch of gear with you and worry about it failing. Then again, if someone knocks over your main playback machine or spills something on it, you're in deep shit.

quoted 1 line When a techno act perform 'live', what are they really doing? Assume I know

>When a techno act perform 'live', what are they really doing? Assume I know

very little about the current technology.> First of all, i think they enjoy themselves. I suppose it's a pleasure to see people dancing while your music is going out the amplifier. I deduce from that it's a pleasure too remembering urself dancing on the floor when u where still a simple dancer. Then taming animalish binary hexadecimal machines. Direct playing or not, they must have a quite good skill. I think it's an old reflex to imagine that on a gig the band must play on-line that thing a.k.a. music (µ-ziq). If you manage to do noises with your machines, u're nearly ready to do live shows. You actually just need to make it sounds well or not so disharmonious except if u're an avant-gardist 'often borring' musician. Direct or not, there is: - art. - people on stage. - people off stage. - music... Salut! Auf wieder sehen! Tot ziens! Dazvidania! _ _ (O)(O) ____________, )\/( °----=====µ \ ( °° ) '_' ( 0) UU ___________________________________ | dimitri.della.faille@infoboard.be | ===================================