Monome 512 + 256 live performance
April 20th, 2010
Live performance from Iballz 768 on the monome 512 and 256 at phog lounge in Windsor USA.
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Archive for the ‘Live’ Category
Laptop performer Edison explains how his live setup works
March 26th, 2010
Live performance with two launchpads + Ableton Live
March 14th, 2010
Deadmau5 interview, live footage video
November 12th, 2009
Live laptops in music poll – academic research
September 5th, 2009
Well I was browsing the net other day and stumbled upon a post on the Drowned in sound forum. The post is a questionaire about what people think about laptops in live music check it out.
http://drownedinsound.com/community/boards/music/4195237
You can complete the full survey here. Will be very interesting to see the results. I’m going the contact the guy who conducted it and see if he’ll let me post the results here.
Zander
5 ways to make a laptop performance more interesting
August 27th, 2009
So if your a solo laptop performer you’ll probably know that blank expression of a few people in the crowd when you playing live. Whats are they doing? Are they checking their emails? How is that sound being made? It’s not a nice feeling for the performer knowing that your audience doesn’t understand what your doing. I’ve even had people come up to me after gigs saying “great DJ set” and i’ve had to explain it wasn’t a DJ set and that the music was being made and manipulated live. Of course the following question is “How do you do that?”. After ten minutes of explaining it they get it. Well i thought up a 5 ways to help improve the way a laptop set is performed, well at least from an audiences point of view.
1. Visuals
Coldcut live
Lets face it, looking at a guy standing behind a laptop on stage just click a mouse is very boring. Unless of course hes really into it and jumps around loads. One way to take the focus off you behind you laptop is visuals. Have a big screen behind you and a projecter that runs visuals that are associated or created for your music. More and more venues have projectors and screens already installed as DJ’s have started to use visuals more. Get in touch with a local artist, annimator or film maker and ask them to create some visuals for your set. I’ve even seen visuals been created live and in sync with the set by a visual artist sitting by the side of the stage.
2. Midi controllers
Monome
One problem with laptop performers is that they don’t look like their doing anything apart from clicking a mouse on stage. People want to see interaction between musicians and instruments live, thats what they go to see, instruments being played live. This is what laptop sets are missing, laptops aren’t seen as instruments yet so you have to do a little bit more work.
Akai APC40
Midi controllers are one way to spice up the visual performance of a laptop set. There are so many availible now that are aimed at laptop performers, the Akai APC40, monome, Tenori-On and a whole host of keyboard and control surfaces. Using one on stage will break you away form using a mouse so much and give the audience something more interesting to look at. The audience will be able to see you pressing, touching, playing something and then hear the resulting sound. They will see it like an instrument and therefore enjoy it more.
3. Play with a band or live instrument
Get another band member in or multiple band members to play live instruments along side your laptop performance. Which instruments all depends on the style of music your performing but the most common one’s i’ve seen are a drummer, bassist, keyboard or synth player and even sometimes a vocalist or MC.
Kieren Hebden & Steve ried
Doing this will take the focus away from the laptop whilst also creating a band where the laptop is seen as an instrument. I’ve seen prfuse 73 bring in a drummer along side his laptop performance and it worked great. Caribou is another artist who plays with a full band and has parts played/mainpulated by a laptop. Laptop performer and pioneer Four tet, plays as Kieren hebden and Steve reid in a laptop and drummer combo.
4. Video feed of stage
Set up a video camera on stage so that it can see what your doing at the laptop and then have the video projected onto a wall or screen behind you. If you can’t do that have you laptop screen projected instead.
This will show the audience what your actually doing to the laptop to get sound out of it, removing the myth that your checking your checking your email or facebook. I’ve seen Coldcut do this not only on the laptops but with turntables and midi controllers too.
5. Lights
This might seem like a really bleeding obvious one but some lights or lighting installation on stage will work wonders. Everybody love’s flashing, colourful lights. Get a visual artist to create some sort of light installation on stage, even if it;s just lamps and fairy lights it will make a difference.
I’ve been and done some gigs with lighting installations and they were great. One actually had an installation that was like a chamber around the performer. You could see them in this pulsating and colourful light box thing and it was fun and interesting.
So there you have it 5 ways to make your laptop performance more interesting. Now you have no excuse to be just stood behind a laptop with a mouse and funny expression. Half of these suggestions don’t take much money to implement. I hope to be seeing more lights and midi controllers at laptop gigs soon.
Zander
Kid beyond – More than a beat boxer – Ableton live looping –
August 13th, 2009
Kid beyond is a guy i’ve known about for a while now. He’s a beat boxer at heart but can do so much stuff with his voice. If you heard his song deep inside, in which he sings, without knowing he was a beat boxer you probably wouldn’t have guessed it was his voice making all those crazy sounds.
Live Kid beyond loops and layers up his voice using Ableton Live and a foot pedal. This gives him the abilty to build up his songs, creating and looping beats, bass, synths, scatching, keys and finally vocals. Check out these videos to see him in action and hear him talking about how he use Ableton Live. Also Go to his website and buy his CD, it’s worth it.
Zander
More Akai APC40 videos
August 11th, 2009
Just come across some more Akai APC40 videos. There was alot of buzz about the APC40 but its been kind of quiet for a while. It’s hard to know how many people have actually brought it since it was quite expensive when released, about £400+. Anyway check out these videos to see if makes you want to buy it, i know i would. Donations please, hahaha i wish.
Thats enough for now i think!
Zander
New tutorial – Using cubase to play live laptop set with drummer
August 10th, 2009
I’ve just finished another tutorial which focuses on how to use cubase to play with a drummer live. The tutorial shows you how to setup and configure cubase so that you can play live with a drummer, using a metronome or click track. This is a great way to play samples or pre recorded parts with a live band and all keep in time.
Using cubase to play live laptop set with drummer
Enjoy
Zander
Akai releases new nano controllers – LPK25 & LPD8
August 3rd, 2009
As the popularity of Korgs nano series of controllers grows, it was inevitable that someone else would jump on the band wagon but who would have thought Akai would be first. Akai have annouced the release of two new nano controllers, the LPD8 and the LPD25.
LPD8
Price = £49.99 /58.86 euros
The akai LPD8 is a drum/trigger controller with 8 velocity sensitive backlit pads and 8 Q link knobs. The pads have 4 banks of memory, similar to the nanopads. The price, size and wieght seems to be similar to the nanopads too, making it a viable choice for live performances. The knobs on the LPD8 and backlit pads might just make it more popular than the nanopad though, thats if you don’t care about losing two pads and an XY pad.
LPK25
Akai LPK25
Price = £49.99 / 58.86 euros
The LPK25 is a midi controller keyboard featuring 25 mini velocity sensitive keys capable of sending note and on/off/trigger messages. The LPK25 also boasts an arpeggiator, sustain button, octave up and down, and tap tempo controls. With the LPK25 Akai seem to have taken Korgs nanoKey and vastly improving it with proper mini keys and improving the versitility with octave up and down functions. Overall the Akai LPK25 seems to be a winner and would suit any laptop performer wanting a portable function packed mini controller.
The LPD8 and LPK25 have not been released yet so we’ll have to wait and see what the response is and hopefully i’ll review them and probably do a comparaison test with Korgs nano series.
Zander
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