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Instrumachines and the Evolution of Electronic Music Performance

bryank.im

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Re: Instrumachines and the Evolution of Electronic Music Performance

#21

Post by geuis »

freshbreakfast wrote: post #2

Hey guys, I wrote this thing. And I know there must be disagreements with the arguments here. Bring it on!

WMF is coming up soon. Have you been in the last couple years or going this time? I haven't been in about 6 years since I moved from Miami to SF. Curious to see how things have changed. When I was at the fringes of the scene back then, the tools that are being used for this style were just starting to come into vogue.

Also, I've seen a few performances where iPads were being used in a similar fashion to decent effect. Not sure which software was used. What are your thoughts on that? The machines these guys are using cool, but essentially still hardware. We are at a point now where an artist can commission a unique instrumachine purely in software that runs on tablets or just regular laptops. This reminds me of classic musicians throughout the ages who either invent their own instruments, or commission artisans to build them.

Re: Instrumachines and the Evolution of Electronic Music Performance

#23

Post by jetti »

adamnemecek wrote: post #4

I've actually had a very similar thought recently. I also feel like it is somewhat easier to master electronic music production (I know that it's still hard but compare how much one knows after playing piano for 6 months with learning Ableton for 6 months). I think that this is awesome since people will be able to concentrate on making interesting music as opposed to learning the instrument.

"I also feel like it is somewhat easier to master electronic music production (I know that it's still hard but compare how much one knows after playing piano for 6 months with learning Ableton for 6 months). I think that this is awesome since people will be able to concentrate on making interesting music as opposed to learning the instrument."

The thing is that Ableton isn't your instrument, it is just a way to arrange what music you've already created. If you're going software based you would have your synth(s) and then other plugins (VSTs) to modify your sound, each with their own learning curve. Then you would have to learn Ableton or whatever Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) you choose. Plus, since sounds are being created from scratch there is a lot to learn about the theory of sound so that you don't get frequencies overlapping. I know that I thought it would be really easy going into it, but I have found that it is much harder than it seems and I have a new found respect for those releasing their music.

Re: Instrumachines and the Evolution of Electronic Music Performance

#25

Post by mnicole »

Great topic!

Daedelus (http://daedelusmusic.com/) is one of my favorite artists, not only because of his tunes but because of how much fun he has just rocking on stage with his Monome/various toys, and how it faces it towards the audience to show what he's doing, even if that's a personal positioning preference. He's also in a documentary about circuit bending available on YouTube that's worth watching called Glitch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvlYM5Js450). Your ears won't thank you, but your geek will.

Other artists that are entertaining to watch fiddle with their digital instruments are Side Brain (hacks gaming peripherals to make music), No Sir E and the ever-wonderful Shigeto.

Re: Instrumachines and the Evolution of Electronic Music Performance

#26

Post by mercuryrising »

I'm always mystified when I see people's fingers move that quickly. I can see myself typing on the keyboard, but it's a simple letter that comes out when I press it. It might just be that it's so normal that I don't think it's cool anymore, but people who can mix music like they type is just awesome to me.

Here's two more videos of people mixing/making cool music on the 'fly'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baWlIzwksHs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTx3G6h2xyA

Re: Instrumachines and the Evolution of Electronic Music Performance

#28

Post by crucialfelix »

freshbreakfast wrote: post #2

Hey guys, I wrote this thing. And I know there must be disagreements with the arguments here. Bring it on!

Sure. Its actually going backwards. Back to a focus on the performer as a simple human who does feats, macho virtuosity and does crowd conscious manipulations.

What electronic music opened up is much larger. Music is internal, electric (like our central nervous systems) and cosmic. The focus is in the body and mind of the people experiencing it. Its in the speakers and on the dance floor. The composer disappears, the audience disappears, the technique disappears (and all that thinking about "is the performance technically accurate/innovative ?")

As soon as you put some clown on the stage all the beauty evaporates and people stand around yelling "woot" and generally not dancing. Or if they do it involves fist pumping and making rock faces.

As soon as you put a live musician in the track then you start thinking about technical execution and about what the musician is feeling and thinking. It limits it. I love live musicians (I majored in Saxophone, I have a piano in my room here), but I just want to point out that the revolution of electronic music is that we took music past the limits of performance.

Its pure sound, pure feeling.

Also you should realize that even jungle, juke, IDM, breakcore are often written with furious fingers and lots of live tweaking. And AraabMuzik is using the auto rolls all the time and he has breaks that set the pace. And he has the dynamics turned way down so its actually pretty hard to make a mistake. Turntablists like Q-bert are a thousands times more impressive. Listen to Sabar drumming and forget about the simple boom bap and cheap rolls that AraabMuzik is doing here. Jungle at its peak twisted the mind with intricate rhythms that really blew minds.

And people have been doing crazy live electronic performance for ooooh.... 60 years now. We used keyboards and drum pads and MPC/SP type machines.

Re: Instrumachines and the Evolution of Electronic Music Performance

#29

Post by stevenameyer »

There are big EDM artists that have really been pushing the envelop on what you can do in live performance for a while now. Deadmau5 specifically has a real obsession about trying to do everything live and it's obvious that this requires a large amount of musical and technical knowledge and talent.

Here is a video with him talking about his live set set up from 2010 and is a really interesting watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTCqeWu094I

I remember hearing somewhere that he has switch over to a complete live show since then, but I can't find a link to confirm this right now. Needless to say what he does is way more then just play some tracks that he made. Which is one of the reason he despises the term "DJ" to describe what he does.

Edit: He is also incredibly obsessed with the lights at his live show and handles the lighting including the rig himself.

Re: Instrumachines and the Evolution of Electronic Music Performance

#30

Post by tb303 »

Wait, this is saying that a genre that was created through instrumachines — people playing a bunch of old roland x0xes, then later the sp-12s/1200s, then later MPCs, live — will somehow be revolutionized by the newer forms of the same instrumachines?

I think essentially the argument is that "laptops are not any fun to play live with" and really, that was just a short phase of electronic music. We all did that for a few years, then found our controllers, monomes, modulars, mpcs, etc. much more fun, and have just returned to what was already there. A laptop can be an instrumachine for the right artist with the right controllers (e.g., Daedelus and his monome http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCzHpQtNduE) attached to it, just as an MPC + SP1200 have been the right instrumachine for hiphop (KRS-One & BDP use one next to the turntables in every concert) for decades.

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