The trend of keeping the controller tilted towards the audience, or the woes of performing live with electronic instruments

[pleurodesis]

I like that fella. I only have one album but it sounds like it was recorded just like this, a mic in a room with music playing over the speakers. Makes me curious about what kind of unconventional recording processes I might be able to fiddle with.

[xenus_dad]

Wow this got y’all riled up! Good topic!

[madeofoak]

let me just add, as someone who regularly uses a laptop onstage and plays back prerecorded stems during performances, that i assure you i am still capable of royally fucking up during a show.

[hyena]

exactly, are we really going to pretend that an Er-301 / teletype isn’t a computer?

a lot of times analog modulars are already computers, especially if you have clocks, s+h, logic, etc…

also, a 301 or similar modules are voltage controlled computers that live inside a modular environment. that’s something pretty different from a daw on a laptop.
and i’m absolutely not implying that there’s something wrong in daw, laptops or computers in general. only that it isn’t the same thing.

[jasonw22]

a 301 or similar modules are voltage controlled computers that live inside a modular environment. that’s something pretty different from a daw on a laptop.

Nah. Lots of “wires” in laptop music. Just more abstract.

[okyeron]

RJD2 is pretty on point with a certain approach to this whole thing. Certainly entertaining.

[mdg]

omg yes this is so, so on point. Much < 3 Braxton

[mlogger]

Pointless, a pitch black performance is not a performance, it’s an installation that belongs in a museum or art gallery. They might think that is quite smart and high art, but what I feel they are doing is patronising the audience. Its inferring that audiences that go to the shows don’t fully listen to the music and that you can concentrate and listen to the music better in the dark. They are trying to teach you how to listen.

Playing/listening in the dark is central to the acousmatic tradition . The idea isn’t that you don’t know how to listen and they need to show you, it’s simply that listening happens differently when other senses are denied. Sure there are all kinds of philosophical problems with this (the assumption of an ideal listener, problematic notions of purity, etc…), but it’s a historically crucial idea to the development of almost the entire field of electronic music (and links the development of electronic music to important 20th c. philosophical movements like phenomenology).

What Autechre do is import the acousmatic tradition into the context of all night raves and electro dance parties. In a sense, it’s the opposite of patronizing. It’s a flattening of “high” and “low” cultures, neither prioritized over the other. A lot of what’s interesting about their work comes from the tensions in that gesture. Whether or not they are really “performing” or not is beside the point.

Thanks for the historical info, and like I said before, playing in the dark is nothing new or original or different. I do have the option of closing my eyes.

In my opinion live performance should be about trying out new, interesting, original ideas, both visibly and sonically, not old ones. Times have moved on, I like to look forwards not backwards and challenge outdated ideas. I believe a live performance should stimulate all your senses, not just one.

Live music and live performance does not move forward if we continue to copy what was done in the past.

Looks like what Autechre have done here is followed tradition visually, whilst continue to move forward sonically.

[DMR]

To me, the desire to avoid laptop computers during performance relies on ignorance on the part of the audience, in terms of knowing how each piece of equipment operates. Laptop performances are seen as boring, ‘checking email’, etc. because everyone in the audience is familiar with a laptop computer, knows how it works, etc. Other pieces of music equipment seem more interesting because they are obscure. Is a person scrolling through menus and staring at the screen of an Elektron Octatrack somehow more interesting than doing the same on a laptop / midi controller? From performances I have seen, I would say no. But I think the former is more likely to be seen as authentic by a naive person.

[greaterthanzero]

To me, the desire to avoid laptop computers during performance relies on ignorance on the part of the audience, in terms of knowing how each piece of equipment operates.

Quite the opposite here. It comes from watching each other play, fully aware of what goes into the process, and trusting that the audience will be excited about what excites us.

Laptop performances are seen as boring, ‘checking email’, etc. because everyone in the audience is familiar with a laptop computer, knows how it works, etc. Other pieces of music equipment seem more interesting because they are obscure.

Guitars aren’t obscure.

Drums aren’t obscure.

A microphone isn’t obscure.

What they are is more visual.

A laptop isn’t visual.

There’s a physical barrier between the audience and what you’re doing.

That’s the difference.

It’s not rocket science.

[hyena]

a 301 or similar modules are voltage controlled computers that live inside a modular environment. that’s something pretty different from a daw on a laptop.

Nah. Lots of “wires” in laptop music. Just more abstract.

well of course Jason, but from a practical viewpoint the difference is there !

[greaterthanzero]

I look down too much. Not metaphorically or in judgement, but literally and physically. I don’t have enough faith that my fingers will land where I need them to, and I haven’t set up a situation where that’s easy or unimportant.

Having watched myself on video from every conceivable angle, I know without a shadow of a doubt that it’s better to see my face than the top of my head. And people usually get the top of my head.

Tilting my controller is, in part, a way to compensate for that. It lets us all look at the same thing.

I think what I want on stage is to point a camera at my hands, and to put that feed onto a large screen right next to me.

It’s unlikely to ever happen, but that might be ideal.

[KristofferLislegaard]

In my opinion live performance should be about trying out new, interesting, original ideas, both visibly and sonically, not old ones. Times have moved on, I like to look forwards not backwards and challenge outdated ideas. I believe a live performance should stimulate all your senses, not just one.

@mlogger Do you have any exsamples of anyone doing that? And how are they doing it?
People have been improvising with modular for a few decades now btw.

A laptop isn’t visual.
There’s a physical barrier between the audience and what you’re doing.

Tilting my controller is, in part, a way to compensate for that. It lets us all look at the same thing.

So it finally comes back to the title of the thread.

[lijnenspel]

‘checking email’

Note to self: build a web extension which turns gmails interface into a musical instrument. The performance will then consists of me sending demos, receiving rejections and answering ridiculous book requests, all live on stage.

Would that be transparent (visual?) enough?

[Jonny]

I believe a live performance should stimulate all your senses, not just one.

Some believe that you should deprive certain senses. The real question here is, does the performance have an effect on you? What we’ve learned in this discussion is that it’s different for everybody.

Tim Hecker keeps coming up in this thread, but he has carefully considered these things and the experience of the audience - he talks quite a bit about it in a red bull interview. Fog is an interesting intermediate between clarity and darkness. Since we’re talking about the senses, he’s the only person I know of who has given thought to using perfumes and releasing scents during the show.

[mlogger]

In my opinion live performance should be about trying out new, interesting, original ideas, both visibly and sonically, not old ones. Times have moved on, I like to look forwards not backwards and challenge outdated ideas. I believe a live performance should stimulate all your senses, not just one.

@mlogger Do you have any exsamples of anyone doing that? And how are they doing it?
People have been improvising with modular for a few decades now btw.

A laptop isn’t visual.
There’s a physical barrier between the audience and what you’re doing.

Tilting my controller is, in part, a way to compensate for that. It lets us all look at the same thing.

So it finally comes back to the title of the thread.

I don’t really see this about a comparison between modular synths vs laptops. It can be anything vs laptops. If your playing a laptop gig, all I say is do something interesting with the visuals because looking at a person hiding behind a black square is not interesting to the audience.

For example, put the screen flat to the surface and stand up or project the screen behind you so the audience can see what you are doing. The same can be said hidden behind any piece of music instrument that prohibits the audience viewing, such as a modular - the audience want to know what you are doing.

As soon as you have flipped that laptop screen up, you have created a barrier between you and the audience. Even before you have started to play, the audience already have preconditioned ideas about what to expect - ie “he’s not really playing live” “he’s cheating” “oh, it’s laptop gig, I thought he was bringing his Serge” “it’s not a real gig, it’s a dj gig”.

I like what is happening in the diy video synth and vector synthesis world. People like Derek Holzer - http://macumbista.net/ and Jonas Bers - https://jonasbers.com/media/

This is Jonas Bers using hacked diy analog video synthesis and a modular.

[Claude]

I’m just going to jump in. I play my 6U modular on a keyboard stand. I’m 6’4" tall and refuse to hunch over a table. Standing up straight is important to me, particularly to my lower back. From the audience’s perspective it looks like I’m playing a box, which I suppose I am. I am fortunate to tend to play with other musicians, which adds a great deal to the package because I tend to look like I’m playing chess…in a box.

I tend to patch from scratch, or start off with what I come up with during soundcheck, so the patching and wiggling gets some attention from the audience. I hear regularly that people like trying to connect what they see me do with what they hear. My approach tends to be about the human exploration of sound, so maybe a cape would help me more than tipping my rig towards the audience?

Forgive this shameless example:

[sandy]

Thanks for sharing that Jonas Bers video.
Love the combination of sound and visuals in it.

[Shiftr]

In the Netherlands you’ve got a few regular modular synthesizer concert nights. Noodlebar in Rotterdam and Modulation in Utrecht. At both these events the performers are always standing in de middle of the room and the audience is sitting and standing around them. I think this a really nice way to perform for modular. And I’ve also seen a performance of Pete Edwards twice where he is also in the middle of the audience and asks everybody to come standing really close almost bend over his equipment. This was a really experience. But i think it will only work up to a 100 people or so.

https://www.dutchmodularfest.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Modulation-1280x854.jpg

[Starthief]

If I were ever to play out, that’s how I would want to do it. Gawk at my gear and watch what I’m doing, so I can concentrate on making music instead of trying to visually entertain the audience and feeling self-conscious

When I performed in a taiko group, the creative director always said how we looked was more important than how we sounded. It really was all about big movements, choreography, and stage presence. I discovered I don’t really want to perform but to create music.