question on life performance.

Galaxis

New Member
Joined
Apr 21, 2012
Location
Belgium
Hello, I got a question on performing your music live at a gig, when you make full song with fx and stuff, amazing drops etc, how should you perform it live, should you mix it with other songs you made, should you 'recreate' it with the samples you made while creating the track? how do you do it?

Because, when I create a track, I play the instruments one by one recording it, cutting good pieces out and letting them melt together. (don't ask me for any tracks, I aint got good ones, I'm on a project right now and saving money for a good home studio) I can't see how I should be able to recreate that in public.

any idea's, tips, stories about how you guys do it?

thanks, galaxis
 
Cool topic man :)

I would like to one day get interesting and creative with my live performances. For now though (I am starting live gigs very soon :D) I take along my Laptop with DJ software and my MIDI Controller and just do live mixing/djing. I mix in a variation of my tracks, unreleased tracks by myself and others, "underground" producers tracks and of course, popular tunes that will hopefully get the place going! :D
 
Great topic.

What I do is setup my Traktor S4 so that I have two audio decks and 8 sample decks (4 x 2 channel). I then take the one shots, loops, FX, etc. that I've stored in a playlist and load/cue as needed. Once it's time to introduce the next track, I'll go to my next playlist with the new stems are start switching over to the new tune by "exchanging" stems via the sample decks. The new version of Tracktor (2.5 due May 31) is suppose to revamp the sample decks for the better, but I digress.

Admittedly, I've been doing this primarily for private/corporate functions to help aid in mixing tracks with greatly differing BPM's, but it has worked out well. I'm actually doing a more creative approach with this for the mix CD I've been working on for ages.

Cheers.
 
I aim to have one clearly defined part in each song which I will tweak live. In some tunes this might be the bassline, in others, I'll apply chops and edits and fx to the drums, in still others, i might play pads and chords. Nearly everything else in the tune shall play from start to finish more or less automatically. I also break each tune up into a couple of sections which loop (4, 8 or 16 bar loops are common), and I manually go from one to another, often implementing a fill or variation with track mutes (cut out the kick and snare for a bar, etc). This is enough to keep me pretty busy. What is happening, overall, is that all the sounds and parts are pre-made, but I am creating the arrangement on the fly. So if the crowd are digging something, I can leave it going longer, and if they look bored, I can move quickly to the next bit :) Another way to do this, as others have touched on, is to break your tracks up into a couple of stems, and DJ and loop and remix these together. Again, this is mostly producing the arrangement live, but the material is already made.

In the end though, how you present your music live is an individual taste thing, just like your music is. The gear you use will determine a lot of what is possible, too.
 
Most pro live electronic music acts (not dj's) tend to use hardware to play the main parts of the tunes, such as drum machines for the beats and synths for the bass. And things like fx will probably be set up to play automatically. The key is in the preparation.

Although some pro's use Ableton and other software for their live acts, personally i feel its much more impressive to see acts bang it out live on some hardware.
 
Thanks everyone for the replies! This has given me a really good idea on how producers bring their tracks live. perhaps something for me later? (when I have my own studio :D)
 
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