Describe your live setup/performance method

[TubularCorporation]

It's crazy a working Amiga 4000 setup can cost more than a new Macbook these days. 

 

 

My only TV right now is an Amiga monitor, but I'll probably never have an Amiga to hook up to it.

[Braintree]

Was lucky enough to witness you performing this set and it was a very satisfying, metallic experience!

 

really good stuff braintree! 

 

Hmmmm yeah good call on the backup set.  

Cool vid  and concept Braintree, sounds wicked.

 

Anyone have recommendations on plug-ins that are good for doing a wide range of glitch edits/beat manipulation on the fly that aren't a total drain on CPU?  Ableton's beat repeat wasn't really cutting it for me, but any other VST I've tried is unusable due to how much memory it takes up.

 

Thanks for the kind words, gents!

 

Also, Sweguno's live performance is quite engaging. Check out that video! I think I was standing right next to the camera guy (ripped on beer and whiskey).

 

Future

I'm waiting for my DigiTone to come in the mail, after which I'm thinking I will order a DigiTakt and design a set using them running into my Octatrack. I'll use the OT to mix, loop, add effects, and play back full tracks when I want DJ-like capabilities. The DigiTakt and DigiTone will give me tools to improvise and have more control over individual instruments when playing tracks.

 

 

The Digitone is certainly a powerful machine. I've just scratched the surface, but sounds like you could make an entire live set with that alone. Using the OT to handle beats and the DT for synths would be an awesome combo.

 

I'm trying to put together some simple techno shit right now and planning to play out under a different name for a while. OONTS OONTS OONTS ZZCCHHT.

[Zephyr_Nova]

 

 

Also, Sweguno's live performance is quite engaging. Check out that video! I think I was standing right next to the camera guy (ripped on beer and whiskey).

 

 

He has the smoothest falsetto/vibrato  combo in all of IDMs.

[thawkins]

Thanks for posting the videos, good stuff and lots of ideas and inspiration there. :)

[Goiter Sanchez]

Zephyr do you have any vids of your recent gig to share?

[Nil]

Played +150 gigs between 2007 and 2010, and always tried to keep my set-up as simple and compact as possible.

 

First, because it’s easier to fly with. Also to limit myself so that I could play my sets in the most spontaneous way possible. Autopilot mode.

 

I played Sonar with a MacBook Pro and a BCR2000, opened for Squarepusher with the same set-up and a monome 40h, shared stage with Daedelus and Mike P with a Korg NanoKey and a monome 256, I stole the show opening fir Nathan Fake using a UC33e... remixing / processing my stems on the fly, having some silence between tracks (or delay fading out etc...) and I believe it simply worked.

 

I used to split my tuned into 3 stems (beats / bass / melodies) and to have also some processing in the masterbuss. Live’s own GrainDelay, BeatRepeat, SupaTrigga, some EQs... I’d say that muscle memory and practice were paramount, to really play my set-up, no matter how minimal it was. It was pure fun, and easy enough to react to the crowds.

 

I saw so many friends with too complex set-ups to really enjoy the moment... Not to mention that often the more complex a live set-up the more likely to crash it gets ^^

 

I’d love to play live again but have no clue how I would do technically.

[Entorwellian]

I saw so many friends with too complex set-ups to really enjoy the moment... Not to mention that often the more complex a live set-up the more likely to crash it gets ^^

 

 

Very wise words of advice. It's a bad idea if you are also unfamiliar with the venue's power layout and you are doing your own tech work. The one time I did a complex-setup show and I had people unplugging my things accidentally and higher anxiety than usual. it was only by a stroke of luck that I got through the set. Right at the very end it crashed hard.On the other hand, just sitting in front of a laptop is too simple and safe. It's definitely a struggle to balance.

[Zephyr_Nova]

Zephyr do you have any vids of your recent gig to share?

 

Nah, nothing worthwhile.

[xox]

16GB

Hows that not enough, my friend?

[snack master]

Thanks for starting this topic, OP.  It's been nice reading everybody's replies so far.

 

I've played several live performances over the years with several different configurations ranging from using an MPC to sequence hardware through a mixer, playing Ableton through an iMac, to playing over a PA with just an Emu MP7.  What ended up becoming important to me was ease / speed of composition with the setup, portability, reliability, and thinking about what I wanted to do.  After attempting for a while to use the MPC or the Emu to control my synths, I got to the point where I realized that I had the most success using Live to sequence everything.

 

This video isn't that old, but it shows the way that I used to do things until recently where I would manually change patches on my synths instead of using program change messages earlier at some point.  I cringe that I didn't make myself get into it sooner, as it would've prevented so many headaches along the way.

 

 

Here's a video showing an earlier performance where I'm using an MPC 500 to sequence a Nord Drum 2, Mutable Instruments Shruthi-1, Roland Alpha Juno, the X0xbox, and a Yamaha FB-01:

 

 

I've also done live sets with just a laptop, but that I never really enjoyed that entirely as a performer:

 

 

The last performance I did was probably my most successful ever, just because I could focus on levels and flourishes, as I was using Live to send program change messages to my equipment whenever I needed to.  Supposedly there's a video of that, but it was never shared with me.

 

Nowadays, I've started getting into details with using control change messages to help set up a live performance, but it gets to a certain point where I don't want to program too much beforehand, and would want to leave some things for the moment. 

 

With my current setup (a laptop running Live to control synths), I'm finally in a place where I can easily compose and perform with hardware and break beats off the laptop at the same time.  I dunno if I just had a crappy laptop before or if I was just too much of a novice to figure out the timing, but I could never reliably get things in sync until I tried it again recently.  So, it took me a while to get to where I'm at now, but I know my setup well, I know what it can do and how to use it, so I'm not going to get upset at how I got here.

[TRiP]

Really nice to hear and see peeps set-ups, great how diverse and different they all are.
 

Past:
Laptop running Live 9,
APC 40/PuSH 1 controlling clip launching
MIDIsport 8x8/s sending MIDI to all hardware

usual suspects: slim phatty, machine drum, moog minitaur, tetra, microgranny, tb-3 (other times used jx3p, poly61, x-station 61, MC-505, monotribe, pocket piano)
effects: Moog Minifooger Delay, Eventide Space (used to use monotron delay and WEM copicat tape delay)

 

Current (still working on it):
Trying to simplify and get away from laptop and just use the gear.

Digitakt as the 'brain' + MS20, Machinedrum, Minitaur, Tetra.
same effects as above
 

[Zephyr_Nova]

 

16GB

Hows that not enough, my friend?

 

[TubularCorporation]

I only have audio of the last show I did, this one as a duo, but here it is synced up to the original video.  NSFW because it's a late 60s Kenneth Anger film, which is self explanatory if you've seen many later Kenneth Anger films.

 

I'm playing an octatrack, M.I. Anushri and CZ-101 (I brought the Tanzmaus but decided it wasn't worth the trouble of hooking it up since I was mostly using it for a kick drum on the downbeat every 4 bars or so, if that).  Everything else is from a Eurorack modular skiff and one of the current EHX analog delay pedals, I forget which one he was using.

 

Sync isn't perfect since all I had was a few seconds of cell phone footage as a reference for lining up the audio and video, but it's close enough.  We could have just farted into tin cans and it would have been an improvement on Mic Jagger's original soundtrack, which is some of the hackiest electronic music I've ever heard, from any era.

[Entorwellian]

 

16GB

Hows that not enough, my friend?

 

Was just going to say... how many samples are you loading in at once??!? That is enough to construct a full orchestra in vst form.

[ganus]

I'm gonna do a show on the 28th for a local arts festival. 2nd show I've done. My first was laptop DJing my own stuff with FX, but I was unsatistfied with that.

 

I've been practicing with a new setup, where I use a mixer, delay pedel available on a send, PO-32 doing drums going through a tube distortion pedal & synced up with FL Studio, which I have doing loops/stems in performance mode.

 

I have two stereo outputs available from the laptop, and right now one is being used for the click for syncing the PO-32, and the other for the actual sound output from my laptop. I can't decide if I want to stick with the PO-32 for the sake of spontaneity, or switch to using the click channel for drum loops from my laptop, and just bypass the PO-32. it would be simpler and less error-prone to have all sound coming from the laptop, but I feel like it would be a lot of fun to be able to actually jam out the drums live.

[digit]

I still approach composition/production/recording in a very naive way making everything in a fairly basic wave editor. When I was asked to play a set of original material a few years back I had to come with something fast whilst having no tenable knowledge of how to use an actual DAW.

 

So basically I have some loops going in the wave editor on my laptop where I can control a few parameters, fade, pan, volume, EQ, a few basic effects on my mixer. I use an MPC 500 to trigger some sounds and play basslines mostly. On top of that I sing and overdub loops of my vox over everything and mess with that on a line of pedals. It can fall outta sync pretty easily so I need to nail the timing on my loop pedal or continually correct it. It is a far from ideal setup for what I wanna do but it's what I got at the mo. Here's a vid from last year of me using this setup:

 

 

damn this is good!

 

i think an octatrack would work really good for what you do here. check one out if you haven't already.

[TubularCorporation]

 

I still approach composition/production/recording in a very naive way making everything in a fairly basic wave editor. When I was asked to play a set of original material a few years back I had to come with something fast whilst having no tenable knowledge of how to use an actual DAW.

 

So basically I have some loops going in the wave editor on my laptop where I can control a few parameters, fade, pan, volume, EQ, a few basic effects on my mixer. I use an MPC 500 to trigger some sounds and play basslines mostly. On top of that I sing and overdub loops of my vox over everything and mess with that on a line of pedals. It can fall outta sync pretty easily so I need to nail the timing on my loop pedal or continually correct it. It is a far from ideal setup for what I wanna do but it's what I got at the mo. Here's a vid from last year of me using this setup:

 

 

damn this is good!

 

i think an octatrack would work really good for what you do here. check one out if you haven't already.

 

 

 

For some reason the top recommendation Youtube keeps giving me for it is Wesley Willis concert footage.  Go figure.

[Goiter Sanchez]

Thanks for starting this topic, OP.  It's been nice reading everybody's replies so far.

 

I've played several live performances over the years with several different configurations ranging from using an MPC to sequence hardware through a mixer, playing Ableton through an iMac, to playing over a PA with just an Emu MP7.  What ended up becoming important to me was ease / speed of composition with the setup, portability, reliability, and thinking about what I wanted to do.  After attempting for a while to use the MPC or the Emu to control my synths, I got to the point where I realized that I had the most success using Live to sequence everything.

 

This video isn't that old, but it shows the way that I used to do things until recently where I would manually change patches on my synths instead of using program change messages earlier at some point.  I cringe that I didn't make myself get into it sooner, as it would've prevented so many headaches along the way.

 

Damn that looks like fun and it sounds great 

 

 

 

I still approach composition/production/recording in a very naive way making everything in a fairly basic wave editor. When I was asked to play a set of original material a few years back I had to come with something fast whilst having no tenable knowledge of how to use an actual DAW.

 

So basically I have some loops going in the wave editor on my laptop where I can control a few parameters, fade, pan, volume, EQ, a few basic effects on my mixer. I use an MPC 500 to trigger some sounds and play basslines mostly. On top of that I sing and overdub loops of my vox over everything and mess with that on a line of pedals. It can fall outta sync pretty easily so I need to nail the timing on my loop pedal or continually correct it. It is a far from ideal setup for what I wanna do but it's what I got at the mo. Here's a vid from last year of me using this setup:

 

 

damn this is good!

 

i think an octatrack would work really good for what you do here. check one out if you haven't already.

 

Thank you! I have seen people use Octatrack a lot and it looks like fun! Seems that you can accomplish a lot on the fly with the just the one device. I have a friend who performs with two Octatracks (Octatri?) at once and I have been meaning to ask him why that is. What would you say the advantages of it are?

 

 

 

For some reason the top recommendation Youtube keeps giving me for it is Wesley Willis concert footage.  Go figure.

 

Hah YouTube algorithm on point as usual! Unfortunately I didn't perform my ambient cover of 'Lick A Camel's Ass' that night ;P

[Zephyr_Nova]

 

 

16GB

Hows that not enough, my friend?

 

Was just going to say... how many samples are you loading in at once??!? That is enough to construct a full orchestra in vst form.

 

I just had 10 or so tracks divided into 4 stems each, plus a few effects native to Ableton.  As soon as I added a glitch plug-in that seemed interesting into the equation it made my computer shit bricks.  I had my buffering pretty low so the response would be nice... raising that may have helped a bit but from what you guys say I probably shouldn't have to.  Will troubleshoot soon and report back.

[Dpek]

My setup is quite simple: I have a Reason running. Inside of the project all tracks are already layed out, transitions on place, the set is locked in. There is also a metronome track cabled directly into my headphones. And all tracks are mine and have their main melodies muted out, so I play them out on the midi keyboard. Here comes the improvisational part - I'm truly getting quite confident with synth playing so every act is basically different because I play it differently. I can also trigger synced effect with my synth which adds another dimension.

 

A few years ago I also played with a drummer which made it a beast on another level. You can check it out:

[xox]

 

 

 

16GB

Hows that not enough, my friend?

 

Was just going to say... how many samples are you loading in at once??!? That is enough to construct a full orchestra in vst form.

 

I just had 10 or so tracks divided into 4 stems each, plus a few effects native to Ableton.  As soon as I added a glitch plug-in that seemed interesting into the equation it made my computer shit bricks.  I had my buffering pretty low so the response would be nice... raising that may have helped a bit but from what you guys say I probably shouldn't have to.  Will troubleshoot soon and report back.

 

 

are you sure it's not low cpu power?

[TubularCorporation]

 

 

For some reason the top recommendation Youtube keeps giving me for it is Wesley Willis concert footage.  Go figure.

 

Hah YouTube algorithm on point as usual! Unfortunately I didn't perform my ambient cover of 'Lick A Camel's Ass' that night ;P

 

 

 

I'd listen to that.

[Zephyr_Nova]

 

 

 

 

16GB

Hows that not enough, my friend?

 

Was just going to say... how many samples are you loading in at once??!? That is enough to construct a full orchestra in vst form.

 

I just had 10 or so tracks divided into 4 stems each, plus a few effects native to Ableton.  As soon as I added a glitch plug-in that seemed interesting into the equation it made my computer shit bricks.  I had my buffering pretty low so the response would be nice... raising that may have helped a bit but from what you guys say I probably shouldn't have to.  Will troubleshoot soon and report back.

 

 

are you sure it's not low cpu power?

 

I'm not sure of anything.  I have a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i7 processor.

[Ragnar]

 

 

 

not that this is too analord sounding, but it's crazy to think some analord tracks were probably that simple a setup, the trojan.killav.e type faster stuff

[Ragnar]

oh HEY I forgot I posted some videos on 'how the heck does a Ragnar/DJ Saint-Hubert track work'

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzL8X8guQDg

 

 

also not possible to play live lol, at least not when screen recording apparently

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpAX0hcDOpg

 

 

 

the new material was gonna be like the first video, combo of algo and tracker stuff. But I'm thinking more, I want to feed back audio into the algo sequencing so I can manipulate live and change the outcome of the music?

 

and so I've never done 'live' but some tracks and albums were a 'live' environment type thing like I coulda played live and used the soundboard or whatev

 

but yeah if I did do live, I want my new material to be approaching that, stuff you could perform live and get a way different outcome each time