live set workflow

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5meohd
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live set workflow

Post by 5meohd »

what are your minimal required "instruments" when doing a live techno set?

I'm doing one tonight.. I'm struggling with two much gear vs. bored audience.
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Mono-xID
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Re: live set workflow

Post by Mono-xID »

my "instrument" for playing Live is...äääähm....my Laptop with Live 8 and an APC 40....pretty decent set-up for playing Live...not much booth-space required and fooking flexible :) -ex
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Re: live set workflow

Post by djd_oz »

Elektron Machinedrum?
5meohd
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Re: live set workflow

Post by 5meohd »

yeah we use live and an apc40 too.. I just don't enjoy that workflow/limitation/infinite possibilities.

we ended up with a eurorack mono synth, ultranova, maschine, analog mixer, apc40/live 8, and two yamaha drum pads going into an alesis triggier i/o.

my monomachine took a sh!t... basically ruined the set in advance.

set up time since the table space was completely empty was only 15 minutes..

routing all the channels for the first time took much much longer..

it was pretty fun though!
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optX
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Re: live set workflow

Post by optX »

my minimal required gear nowadays is a notebook, an interface, a midi controller and a mouse.

I did my first liveset just with hardware - Electribe MX, DSI Evolver, Jomox M-Resonator, little Soundcraft mixer. But I wasn`t very pleased with the results. I couldn`t apply any properly mixing (but this seemed to be a problem for me just at the end - at first I liked that "rough" sound straight from the synths). Then I realized that this liveset isn`t sounding anything similar to my produced tracks. Because when working on hardware with just two hands you can`t do all the tricks you can achieve on your productions. I don`t say A is better than B, I just mean that my liveset didn`t fit to my productions. And I wanted it to fit =)

On my next liveset I switched to software (Notebook, NI Maschine, two midi controllers). But I was doing more or less exactly the same. I couldn`t apply a lot of mixing because 10 entities of Maschine loaded into Ableton Live was something like 90% CPU usage. Workflow anyway was pretty similar to my hardware liveset.

Nowadays I am using Ableton Live as my sequencer. The newest liveset consists of 8 tracks which I have produced previously in Live. I don`t arrange a whole song, I just produce audio clips in Live-View. Some parts are for peaktimes, some for breaks. Then I mix (mixdown) the audio clips and copy the mixed wav-files into the liveset-project. I do a rough buildup of my liveset - which doesn`t mean that I pre-produce the whole liveset, I just arrange something like "markers" which tell me where to go over the time. Between those "markers" I am arranging the several clips improvised, individually and on the fly during the gig.

I know that this way isn`t a REAL liveset. Neither my "improvisation" is a real impro because I am arranging pre-produced loops improvisational =) But anyway, I do have a lot of moments in my liveset where it depends on my manual gearcraft if something goes well or wrong and I have to tweak the knobs all the time too ;)

On the other side I am doing live ambient impro sessions with a good friend. guitars, synths, notebooks, controllers. Nothing is prepared, we never know in which direction it will flow. Did some gigs with that project and people where asking "Are you serious? When is this noise over? Is that just a intro for a drumnbass tune?" and things like that. So, when I do techno livesets I want the people to dance and have fun - and I wanna dance and have fun too. So my real impro liveset stays ambient (*)
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Re: live set workflow

Post by steevio »

for me its just about trying different approaches and finding what works best for you personally, then practicing till your performance is professional and has the desired reaction on the dancefloor.

i started out with a 909, 2 303's, Sh101, small mixer and a couple of digital effects boxes in the early 1990s, which was great for a live set at that time, easy set-up.
but as my rig got bigger it got to be a pain in the ass, so i dropped the hardware and i ended up with a laptop, Ableton and a controller by 2005, which was ok for a while, but as ive been a live musician all my life, i found it very unsatisfying, and i didnt feel like i was putting much expression into my music, and it fealt too easy and safe for me.

now i have a eurorack modular and a moog voyager RME, and thats perfect for me. its taken me a long time to find the perfect instrument for me personally, but now i've got it super streamlined, and i'm very well practiced on it. it's taken me over two years of practicing every day to get to a standard that i feel is good enough to gig out regularly, but thats not bad, it took me 8 years to get good enough on the drums, and about the same for guitar.
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Re: live set workflow

Post by Lampmeister »

Currently running with just an Octatrack, Nord Rack 2 and a Koma Elektronik BD-101 delay/gate here. Could happily do gigs with just the OCtatrack.
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