Artist Setups

most inspiring live setup i’ve seen in a while - wish we could see how the ableton tracks are integrated

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@cosmicsoundexplorer i added a blog post link detailing the visit. it’s a broadcast mixer by sonosax

@madeofoak i agree. i’m guessing that live is handling some stems and clocking/sequencing…

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Mostly just solid creative ideas and efficient Ableton-ing, but much < 3 0pN circa R Plus Seven: Oneohtrix_Point_Never_The_Echo_08-21-12_16

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That makes even more excited for his show at Funkhaus here in Berlin in a few weeks.

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I saw Bon Iver a couple weeks ago in St Paul, and although a lot of their live rig as a band remains a mystery to me, it was quite inspiring. On the surface it looks like a regular band setup, but through the show I noticed band members manipulating each other’s signals. I’ve seen them use the Messina before, but they also had a couple modular rigs on stage that they were using to process audio sends.

One particular moment that I thought was really awesome, was matt mccaughn receiving a send of Justin’s guitar, and processing it through what I believe to be a clouds module during the song “Marion”. It was incredibly tasteful, and IMO really looked like they were just having a ton of fun experimenting with the songs live.

Also, Justin controlling the harmonies on Mike Lewis’ sax is just so amazing. Never been more excited about a sax solo in my life. Dude rips and the Messina adds a whole different dimension.

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YES! @lanserdj for Marion I was almost thinking that the guitar was potentially being live recorded into morphagene and then played back. I saw James Blake and they were doing a similar thing :slightly_smiling_face:

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@lanserdj @ludvista29 This reminds me how much I (we) need a real-time harmonizer for Norns

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I wonder how we could port some sort of Eventide H3000 style harmonizer to norns with MIDI control? (this is probably best for another thread haha)

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I totally hadn’t noticed the Soundgas link here somehow. Soundgas are the absolute kings of vintage gear! Not just in terms of sourcing, servicing and modding it, but in actually using it in interesting ways too. Their stand at Synthfest is always an absolute joy to visit and this year was no exception. The highlight for me was a setup like this:

soundgas-synthfest

Just three drum sounds but absolutely immense and utterly beautiful!

Yeah! Definitely could’ve been that too. Haven’t had a chance to really explore clouds and see if I could replicate it. Also looking forward to getting Morphagene in my rig. Interested in what other modules Andy and Matt have in their rigs.

And absolutely, @nonwaved . That would be incredible. If norns could handle it that would be so much fun.

lucier-long-thin-wire-03

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More insight into the new Floating Points album.

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deep kria vibe here:
“The simplest but maybe most effective thing is not having the same length for every rhythm. If you’ve got four percussive elements, make sure they’re not all the same length. It’s like Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin de Temps idea. He’s got these melodic patterns of 12 notes on the clarinet but the rhythmic pattern is 13 notes long. So it goes through the 12 melodic notes but then the first note of the next melodic cycle is only the 13th rhythm. Then the second note of the melody is then the first note of the second repetition of the rhythm. Then the other instruments have their own specific rhythmic and melodic patterns, too, so nothing ever loops. It takes 200 years of them playing the tune to all land on the same beat again.”

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the new Floating Points album is tremendous, looking forward to reading the article

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Speaking of that Floating Points video from RA, I’ve really been enjoying that series “The Art Of Production” they’ve been doing. I’m a big fan of Surgeon’s work, and this pair of videos from that series are great. Love the super minimal live setups he’s tended to use in recent years.

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I was surprised to see how minimal a setup he uses - though for that kind of techno it makes total sense.

and of course his abstract rig has a big ole lyra at the heart of it.

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How are the loops on the 45000 (or any live looping setup for that matter) cut at a loopable point? (let’s say 4 bars)
Is that just on the performer to press the correct button at the correct moment?
There is a MIDI cable it seems, so might be that it’s somehow clocked?

The 45000 has an automatic quantize mode.

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(from the FP link)

Just to be clear, I don’t want it to be assumed that a technical knowledge of harmony is necessary for making harmonically interesting music.

You absolutely don’t need to be able to play an instrument to explore this world. I think maybe as a kid I thought it was essential. Some of the best musicians I’ve met can’t play an instrument. Many of my favourite musicians wouldn’t consider themselves to be technically sound. But those same people can have an incredible sense of harmony.

Even though I do have that technical grounding, there’s a process I use that’d perhaps be useful for people who think they struggle with chords but still want to come up with something that interests them. Basically I record lots and lots of chords completely independently of each other. The overall key doesn’t matter, they can have no relation to each other whatsoever. Then you sample these chords, lay each one out on a key of a keyboard and experiment with playing them back in a different order to see if a certain combination sounds nice to you.

That’s just one way of exploring new progressions that you otherwise might not have come across. For me, as someone who can get around a keyboard, I still might not come up with any of those combinations naturally. I’ve got those go-to voicings as you say. I end up slipping into certain progressions. But this technique can get you exploring harmonic progressions that you wouldn’t have thought up, whether you know about the theory behind harmony or not.

with normal keyboards i find my hands physically playing progressions that are familiar

with earthsea (ie grid of chromatic notes in stacked fourths) a completely new playing style emerges and chord shifts i never would have done just spill out in the best ways.

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