Laptops

So the key things are: (1) good sound; it's got to be really loud w/ good fidelity, otherwise you might as well be at home; and (2) some kind of visual element. A laptop performer should only be half the show. There should be a video or film componant, too, always.

I've always thought it would at least be cool to be able to see what's going on on-screen during the ahem performance - projectors aren't very sexy or anything, but let's face it, most laptop performers are not very exciting-looking themselves. And when two laptop jockeys perform together, why can't they face each other! If you're not playing to the audience, don't face them - it's just awkward.

Dennis Desantis' set from Friday night is a good example of the future. The entire live set was done using Abelton's Live software. Frankly, I am seriously considering selling my hardware studio to go laptop and use this software for live performance.

Dennis Desantis

You can get around the problems inherent in laptop performances by a) having good quality equipment, b) turning off all default sounds, and c) practicing heaps so that you don't fuck things up.

There's no cure for the boredom factor, I don't think. The next time we perform we're going to do a lot more live instrumentalised stuff with keyboards, guitars, flute, etc.

Caveat: what I liked about the LT and kevin's sets were that they put on a show. You know, thay had stage presence (and grate songs) - they were anything but static. That they happen to use laptops to provide (much of) the backing music was largely incidental. (Contrast: DAT P just stood alongside eachother behind their respective laptops for their whole set). This is kind of why I haven't yet attempted to answer Honda's questions.

So alternately, if laptop performers become cult figures or icons much in the same way a DJ would, perhaps audiences could grow to react to the performance more warmly. Stage presence wouldn't be so necessary if the performence were delivered and treated as a dance-floor work out.

The thing to bear in mind is that most people do not actually listen to music. They have it around to compliment their lifestyle, to fit in, to impress themselves with their cooler-than-thou-ness because their taste is more obscure. When you actually present them with music without the non-essential stuff like image and marketing they cannot connect with it. They need a guy to jump around on stage so that they can have a focal point for their evening of uber-hip electroCASH-in irony. They don's hear music with their ears, they see it with their eyes.

Again it all depends on the direction you choose to be interested in, because neither side will disappear. To me, I am not interested in technology providing visually stimulating performance options. I want technology that is going to allow electronic music to be performed with greater fluidity and grace. Abelton's Live and a tibook is boring to look at, but it allows a performer to absoulutely rip apart audio and rebuild songs from the ground up in real time. Live is making me seriously consider leaving the mpc for live work.

I still do not think Live is going far enough. It is a basic loop player with extensive syncing and arranging possibilities. I wish it had more audio manipulation funtions outside of basic editing and vst plug-ins. It would be be great if Live could be hooked into deeper sequencing and audio manipulation programs. If you could make a bastard child of Live, Reaktor and Logic you would have massive realtime live performance possibilities available as a performer.

If you want dancing and singing, go pay a visit to a touring musical. This is not dinner theatre, electronic music should not be prostrate to the visual needs of non-musical audience. That was what was so great about raves in the mid 90's, it was a completed decentralized musical experience. Everybody just got down and ignored the DJ for the most part. There were always trainspotters, but the floor was not visually dominated by the DJ. It was not a star system, the glamour had been cut out of it, it was strictly functionalist performance.

Maybe it is age(i'm 25 now), but I thought the whole idea was to get away from the whole rockstar thing.

That being said, I did enjoy Cex's performance very much when he was in town. However, if he had just brought a cdr and a cdplayer, the set would not have been much different. A lot of jumping around, and not much maniplation of the music.

In the future, I think you will wind up with somekind of convergence between controller technology and sound generation. I think Yamaha had something going with their VL technology, but it came out before the market was looking for something like that. What needs to happen is to make controllers that utilize an interface outside of a piano keyboard. Perhaps something like a cross between a marimba and an oboe... a set of instruments that allow people to play electronic music together in a way similiar to the way a jazz quartet works.

Have you ever tried to make computer music with a group of people? How about around an MPC? You can actually do group work with an MPC, and it is really difficult with computers. This is another issue that needs to be addressed in future software. Right now, the paradigm is based around a single user manipulating data by himself. You can work together, but they software is not designed from the ground up to faciliate this.

As for laptop perceptions, I remember when rockists thought that dj's were an abomination. Now it seems like all the gigs have a guy with a big record collection playing music between sets. Time takes time, the new will always be praised to the heavens, then detested, and then finally accepted as commonplace. Just ignore the punters, they never get anything until you have been done with it for a few years already. ;)

I'm not defending it, but rock IS different. You can't play solitaire on stage in a rock band. Unless you're playing in an open tuning.

Here's another idea - don't put the guy with the laptop onstage. Just run a long cord to the dressing room and let him do his thing in peace. We don't even need to see him, do we?

Bullshit bullshit /bullshit/.

Interesting things happen in Live when you load in non-loops, and things which aren't strictly rhythmic, and then force them to be rhythmic by laying rhythmic things over the top... its strength is its strong rhythm basis, as in, you can set it up using a long volume envelope to set up a rhythm (peaks on 1, 2, 3, 4, and/or in between to make it interesting, for a 4/4 point of view), and then you can get completely lost in changing the sound every other way imaginable, but whatever else you do that rhythm will remain in place. You can change the underlying loop length, the pitch, the whatever, and it's still music.

I think of it in terms of a thing that can play noises and hang them around a rhythmic framework. I never load 'loops' into it. My music is currently based mainly on pad samples recorded off my synth, and random field records. The other night at my gig I had a strong 4/4 rhythm held by dripping water, a 45 second sample of waves on a beach, and a distorted ticking noise... and I was able to (and did)any bits of it that I wanted to change live.

I don't care what my live show looks like - I'm playing for the people who, like myself, go to gigs and dance (yay for being the first person on the dancefloor), or close their eyes and /listen/. Everyone else can fuck off.