Yeah, no matter how much or how little you’re doing, if it’s not obvious, the audience will assume you’re not doing much. This is where causal gestures are really handy (and not the swing-my-whole-arm-to-tweak-an-EQ kind!) — hand hits string/pad/key, note comes out of speaker.

The preparation these days is a killer too — bouncing down loops from each part of the track for each instrument is laboriously dull, before you even start practising.

The one thing we did get right was choosing an unusual venue. In our case it was the Kelvedon Hatch “secret” nuclear bunker. In terms of atmosphere or presence, the venue did the work for us. Made me never really want to play a conventional venue again.

Hope you can find suitably talented AND enthusiastic musicians to play your stuff live. Could be magnificent with the right people.

Will probably be selling my Faderfoxes on eBay soon… *gulp*

But seriously I must just quickly say how much I adore the music you make and having now found this site I’m going to pester you to tell me lots more about what inspires you. I’ve got some tracks I want to send you to master too so I feel an email coming on….

Back to the current discussion. I for one really hope you play live again and soon, because I want to come and see you. I think you hit the nail on the head when you talked about venue. A certain venue with the right promotion with attract the kind of audience who will be content to just luxuriate in the aural pleasure you can provide.

I played my first gig in 19 years back in October for Thomas Dolby’s 50th birthday bash and it was terrifying. I hid myself behind as many synths as I could and literally did not look up from my Mac (running Logic). Despite the nerves I absolutely loved playing live again. It was the first time since school and it gave the hours I had spent in the studio preparing tracks a purpose. It gave me a connection and feedback and ultimately as a musician all I want is for people to enjoy what I enjoy making.

Thomas has been using a VJ for his live shows over the last few years and he has this nifty head mounted camera which can feed images of what he is doing to the VJ screens projecting the images behind him. Maybe introducing that visual element and a connection with the audience, letting them in to your side of the experience, could help?

There are also some amazing instruments and controllers out there now which I think can really help reinforce that visual connection. Something like a Jazz Mutant Lemur to replace your faderfox controller with a cam mounted above it to project its futurist control surface could be fun and on a smaller scale something like touchOSC on the iphone or ipod touch looks good and is something I’m playing with at the moment. I had a Tenori-On last year and that would be great used live either as an instrument or as a controller. I got rid of mine in the end because I bored waiting for improved midi implementation.

OK, I’ve droned on long enough, but please please please play live and let me either come and see you, or join you on stage. I could just hold the cam in front of your controllers!

Very best wishes,
Andrew

On the other note… this doesn’t change the fact that i still only play a small handful of my own tracks in a live set because my stuff tends to be more “listener-music” than anything else… in which case the kaoss pad effects i use will be more like filters and reverbs instead of beat-repeats of glitchies… and that’s not quite as fun either.

The question is always “should i play my own music or should i have more fun by playing someone else’s?”

and yeah, recently i’ve also had the urge to just hide in my cave/studio for good. =\

Good luck with finding the right people to take with you if you choose to have other musicians with you. You definitely want people who just really enjoy the music you’ve created and would be honored to share in the live experience with you.

I can image that it may take awhile before you find something that feels right for you. I wouldnt give up the live performance idea just yet. Keep exploring ideas and opportunities!

TOTAL shift in my thinking about my next performances. I could walk all around my studio/flat triggering loops, dropping things out, putting things back in…

There are a couple different versions of the itouchmidid software (a programmable grid, X/Y surface and an 8-lane mixer (buttons, sliders) but it only runs on iPhone/iTouch:(

It DOES free you up to walk out in to the audience, have them touch the buttons-what ever you might do if you weren’t up there ‘checking email’…:)

Still looks little funny playing though – like holding a small Nintendo controller:)

by the way, not sure if you remember me Chris/Ochre, but I found you online in 2005 and messaged you to tell you how *awesome* i thought your music was. You responded right away, and I’ve been a fan since. Haven’t followed you *in depth* since then, but I got Lemodie and LOVE IT. I turn my ‘non-electronic’ music friends on to it all the time. I also turned John Brian (nonagon) on to you, cuz both of you make such sweet music…

If you’re finding it dull. . then definitely, something needs to change! It could be the gear, the venues, or the method of performance/’how live’ you are… Depending on which direction you want to take. .

I do like the idea of a group performing, I think it’d fit your music well.. But then one reason I love electronic music is I can be selfish and do things on my own, my way.

I feel the exact same way. I would never attempt a live gig without an exstensive, in sync, back drop. The only reason for playing live for me is that it enables me to play my music really loud to people who then have no choice but to listen (or leave). I have laboured over my songs for a very long time, and see no point in performing them live in a – inevitably – diminished form.

People need to be able to connect what they hear with what they see. I recently saw Squarepusher perform, and even if he was joined by a drummer for a big part of the show, the parts where he was on his own it sufficed to watch him play the bass. Everybody, even non-musicians, can relate to somebody banging away on a string instrument or a percussion instrument – perhaps not so much a keyboard (which is why the guys in NIN have made it so that their keyboards stands can be tilted in order to emulate the effect of really “letting go”)

I saw Chris Clark perform and although it was very enjoyable, I found myslef not really watching him but rather listening. One could argue that it might as well could have been playback. As far as I was concerned, it wouldn’t have mattered.

I do wonder about the performance aspect of it though—still having to concentrate hunched over a little box of buttons. Being able to simply ‘flow’ almost unconsciously while playing an instrument is hugely attractive for me, and something I’ve never achieved with technical gizmos, hence the bass guitar idea.

I think I’d have better luck putting an ad in the paper, finding musicians who are aching to do this rather than students who are already in six bands. We shall see anyway—it’s a project I’d like to get sorted towards the end of this year.

My most recent approach, and the one I’ve been happiest with, came when I completely ditched the concept of recreating my songs in a live context, and instead decided to give myself the opportunity to just be spontaneous and in the moment during a performance. To achieve this, I use the MLR max patch, controlled by the monome and routed through Live for mixing and effects. I build preset “pages” of seven loops each (often from different songs), and just let myself explore and improvise with the hands-on sample cutting, looping, pitching, reversing, etc. that MLR allows. I knew I was on to something when my performances stopped being stress-filled exercises in memorization and instead just started being fun. =)

Simplifying things, enforcing consistency (e.g. the same monome rows are always mapped to beats, bass, melodies, etc) and freeing myself to reimagine my work in real time have been the most important principles for me. I’d love to be able to perform with other musicians, but for the one-man-band thing, this is pretty good.