An electronic musician’s dilemma

[juncmodule]

When I’m not procrastinating about making a game with AGS I spend most of my time procrastinating about making experimental electronic music.

Lately however, lately being the past 2 years, it has not been procrastinating, but just down right failing to make anything. I’m in a rut musically and I keep on buying and selling equipment, just trying to find my “voice”.

So far everything has failed. At the heart of my dilemma is the burning issue of “Laptop vs. Gear”. Gear would be electronic music hardware, drum machines, synthesizers, etc.

I have released about 5 albums (independent releases, no label, but with a decent response). Of the five all but one were made with both computer and gear, predominately computer. I have performed live twice, with all gear and no computer.

So, my problem mainly lies with Live Performance. Is seeing a guy playing music on a laptop all that exciting? Personally, I enjoy watching someone tweak knobs on hardware, but…a laptop just seems dull. So, what the hell do I do?? Has anyone here ever seen a Laptop musician perform? What did you like about it? What would YOU want to see in a live laptop performance?

My solution in the past has been to possibly have robots on the stage, I have two Omnibots and thought about buying some other little robots and having them running around on stage as visual entertainment. If I could afford a projector I would do that, but those are too expensive.

Anyway, there it is…help?

later,
-junc

[remixor]

Well, this probably won't help, but I can sort of relate, so who knows?

A few years ago my friend and I were something of a similar situation.  We had been making electronic music under the name Chapter 9, had released one album, and were asked to play a live show.  We used a combination of keyboards and a computer, but we weren't sure how much people would find that interesting.  So on a whim, we asked a drummer and a guitarist we knew if they wanted to back us up for that show, just as a one-time thing.  They were into it, so we had the drummer play what our drum machine would have done and the guitarist convert a lot of our lead lines to guitar.  We had a few practices and the show went so well that we decided to just keep going.  We've never looked back.

I mean, for me, I'd rather see someone doing something more than adjusting hardware, even though that's what we were doing for the most part (before that incident).  I'm not familiar with the robots you mention, but that could be cool.  If you've already perfomed twice will all gear, to be honest I'd stick to that format, as I think it's simply more interesting, and you're obviously capable of it.  Good luck, man!

[n3tgraph]

I think it all depends on the public....

Personally I don't like computer-musicians, I think it's too fake! It also ofcourse depends what you do on your laptop, If you just press play on a mp3 file, it would be rather lame, but if you would create live music on your laptop - how do you do that?

I have seen a lot of musicians who have laptops on stage, most bands of 2 or 3 persons who have a lot of midi backup run through synthesizers and synthesizer modules, I did that once too, but it's not my style. I just want to play with the full setup of bass, drums, guitar, keyboards, vocals. But that could be me.

I think it could work - because dj's do the same actually

[wOoDz]

Yes you would need to be doing something to distract the adiance for the  time you are on stage,Jean Michel Jarre has mega lazer shows, he also had some amazing keyboard, one that comes to mind was a light keyboard, it was debateable if it did anything but it looked damn cool!
robots would look ok, only thing is the need to be kinda big and reliable, and need to be interesting, some people may just see them as a lump of plastic on wheels! damn heathens!

hope it goes ok for you

BTW what software do you use?

[Las Naranjas]

Stand in front of the computer whilst your mate turns the lights on and off.

Hey, it works for Kraftwerk.

[Fuzzpilz]

Electronic music fake? That's a can of giant mutant killer worms best left unopened, so I'll keep quiet about it.

Regarding the interest thing, I don't really understand why it's so important for so many musicians to jump around and whatnot on the stage - but your question is about knob-twiddling, not circus performances. Concerning that - maybe you could hook up the laptop to a projector or something to replace the visible twiddling of physical knobs with that of software?

[Dar-rk Stalkey]

Me, Courtland and Fuzz could write very long posts indeed about doing live music using laptops... and the whole 'electronic music is fake' thing makes me want to vomit everywhere and use a lot of smilies.

[n3tgraph]

hey don't get me wrong - a lot of electronic music is good, but not for the stage - imo.

I mean

What is to be done live with electronic music?

[Fuzzpilz]

Everything.

[n3tgraph]

how?

i mean

ah nevermind

[Fuzzpilz]

Twiddling knobs (to use this phrase for the 2938th time), messing with sequences or playing the keyboard, mainly...

[wOoDz]

if you went to a Who concert and they was just a tape deck on stage, you'd be pretty p***d off wouldn't you, which in theory any big star could do, its as much the show ppl go to see, even tho the music's on a laptop it still has to be composed and someone  has to do it

for years Queen put "no synths" on their albums, if i remember the last without was Jazz, when they used them the kinda went down hill for a while! i couldn't understand why they did use em

to be a success you have to draw attention to yourself, upsetting ppl works! ie sex pistols, m manson, enimen, bite the head of a bat and your made for life...just get the rabbies shots afterwards!

woodz

[c.leksutin]

Aphex Twin once used only a laptop for his whole show, of course he also did the whole show laying on a couch.

As for what is there to do with electronic music,  go find some video clips of orbital playing live.


C.

[plasticman]

find a good vj and place some large screens in front of the stage. then you can stay away with your laptop.

[n3tgraph]

put three (semi)naked women on stage with big boobs dancing and you'll have enough entertainment on stage

[juncmodule]

Stand in front of the computer whilst your mate turns the lights on and off.

Hey, it works for Kraftwerk.

Pretty much where I stand right now. I think I am going to go to some cheap department store and buy some of those kid's DJ lights and hack them together and use that for a light show.

find a good vj and place some large screens in front of the stage. then you can stay away with your laptop.

Great idea. WAYYYYYY too expensive.

put three (semi)naked women on stage with big boobs dancing and you'll have enough entertainment on stage  

I'm thinking more like buy three friends lots of alcohol, dress them up in bunny suits and have them wear plastic baby masks (like at the end of Brazil) and fist fight on stage. It would fit my music better.

go find some video clips of orbital playing live.

heh, my two live performances looked more or less like that. Minus the expensive light show and light-hat-thingy. Just me surrounded by three keyboard stands piled high with gear.

Pretty much I expected a lot of “go guitar-bass-drums” responses. That is just out of the question. I don’t do “bands”. I really don’t like people and to share the creation of music with them is like asking me to…do something really hard. Not that I haven’t tried or that I have anything against other people in bands. It’s just not for me.

As far as how I intend to actually perform on the laptop. I have a few ideas for now. Perhaps create a massive Flash movie with timed scenes. Each scene has a series of buttons/mouse overs/key presses that trigger samples for each song. To eventually get that screen on a overhead would be nice, but way down the road.

In my opinion most commercial software sucks. Then again, it depends on how you use it. Fruity loops is really awesome if you don’t use ANY of the built in samples or effects. I can hear a Fruity Loops song from a mile away sometimes. Same goes for a lot of commercial software. Not to mention it just seems…weak…to not do it yourself somehow. If AGS supported more sound channels I would actually REALLY like to use it. Maybe I will request it in the Tech Forum. If I could write my own music software in C++ that is what I would do…but that is a bit of learning away.

Thanks for the suggestions, keep em’ coming.

Later,
-junc

[Helm]

What are you trying to communicate with your music? Does it have anything to do with being pleasing to an audience? If not, then don't go out of the way to be. If your music is a honest manifestation of your sentiment, then if the don't 'enjoy themselves' because nobody was jumping about on stage, well, that's their problem.

[bspeersradioman]

Get performers of any kind to do a routine to your music.

There are a number of Finnish jugglers and an American named Jay Gilligan who combine live electronic music and juggling shows to delerious results.  Sometimes Jay just sits and lets the musician sculpt--sometimes it's just him, juggling.  It's an amazing effect (and no, Jay is not doing a "circus" routine--it's more like sculping shapes out of the air with balls and clubs).

Work together with someone to create something unique.  I'm sure whereever you are there are performance artists who would love to work with live electronica and split revenues.  Or something.

[remixor]

What are you trying to communicate with your music? Does it have anything to do with being pleasing to an audience? If not, then don't go out of the way to be. If your music is a honest manifestation of your sentiment, then if the don't 'enjoy themselves' because nobody was jumping about on stage, well, that's their problem.

I can't speak for others, but I think if people are going to go out of their way to pay for a live performance, they should probably expect something more than they can get with a recording.  Of course nobody has to jump around, that's just silly, but if there's no evidence that music is actually being created as opposed to just replayed, it's simply not as interesting.  And while there's nothing at all wrong with listening to music being replayed, I'm not sure it's worth a live show.  I do understand your point about not needing to please the audience--I in no way advocate compromising artistic integrity for the purpose of crowd-pleasing--if it's not a part of your statement, but on the other hand if nobody actually enjoys going to your shows anymore and people don't show up, well, then it IS your problem.

[juncmodule]

I believe that my music can stand on its own without trying to "please the crowd" visually. Not to mention the fact that I doubt it will "please" many crowds. I just want to give a person their monies worth is all, both with audio and visual. Either way it would be my creation and my expression. I am a firm believer of the "if you don't like it piss off" philosophy. Perhaps too much of a believer  . In the end it's more a matter of pleasing myself. It's what I would want to see and what I want to project. A guy sitting behind a laptop on stage is just not what I really want to be.

later,
-junc