How much live is performing live
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  1. #1
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    Default How much live is performing live

    Interest article I found in Attack magazine.

    http://www.attackmagazine.com/featur...n-live-techno/

    The question here is, how do you define a live performance?

    Recently I have seen(and have been part of) a recent trend of "performing" live, where the artists just plays a couple of carefully ordered and programmed loops in a tight specific planned order with almost no freedom.

    Where do you draw the line? I personally ditched this kind of performance as I feel I can be more expressive with the music with regular DJing?
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  2. #2

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    For me the only thin live really means an artist playing only his productions / remixes. Apart from that I've seen 'liveacts' from artists who simply used CDJs to DJ their songs, over ableton button pushers to people who perform on the fly on tables full of crazy machines, instruments, etc. Apart from the guy playing 'live' with CDJs (which just somewhat crossed the line for me) I enjoyed most of them and didn't care how much live it really was.

  3. #3
    Tech Convert GRS's Avatar
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    well if you were to ask Steve Aoki, he'd say "jumping off speakers, crowd surfing in a blow up raft, spraying the crowd with champagne and throwing cake in their faces" and "play a song or two in-between all of that".

  4. #4

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    If I touch a jogwheel or twist a knob its a live performance in my book.
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  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Similian View Post
    Where do you draw the line?
    "They" say:

    Beginners practice until the can get it right. Experts practice until they can not get it wrong.
    Whatever the foundation of that, there is certainly an approach to the *technical* risks that one is willing to take on stage. I have nothing to lose and nothing to prove - I can take pretty much whatever risks I want and know that my "day job" will continue to pay the mortgage.

    The "big name" touring acts are much more risk averse (and also much more skilled and practiced) than I am. They can not afford to make a huge glaring mistake in their sets. So, they tend to tweak or accent largely "set" sets. So, they practice and experiment and push boundaries...at home. When they perform, they tend to stay inside their comfort zones.

    And I don't blame them a bit. I "pad" schedules at work, and round expectations down. Then I deliver what I deliver....most of the time it is more than I advertised at the beginning.

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  6. #6
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    For me (Live) definitely means the artist is exclusively playing his own productions. How he does it is none of my business really. Live sets tend to be 60-90 minutes while DJ sets are more like 3-8 hours. That's the way it's defined in most clubs I go to at least.

  7. #7
    Tech Guru calgarc's Avatar
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    “Ableton got picked up by the shitty end of electronic music in the noughts. When you think of it, you think of shitty plip-plop techno.” hahahaha wut

  8. #8
    Tech Guru calgarc's Avatar
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    Live performance =/ DJing... 2 different things.

  9. #9
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    I dont think DJing is a live performance anyway, in the traditional sense of the word.

    And newer DJs are even further from performance. I approach it in the same way as playing guitar.

    IF you are going to claim that you are doing a performance then you cannot use sync, quantise, snap, FLIP, or anything else that takes your movements and quantises them to a predetermined grid. You simply cant do that with guitar, so you shouldnt do it with anything else while claiming to be live.

    If a DJ literally cant make a mistake, because of sync and quantise then its something other than live.

    I dont actually care about any of this, if a DJ selects good music then thats all I need. But once they start claiming things about 'performance' and 'live' is when I start feeling weird about it.

    so much of modern DJing is pretending to do more than you actually are.

  10. #10
    Tech Guru calgarc's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ImNoDJ View Post
    I dont think DJing is a live performance anyway, in the traditional sense of the word.

    And newer DJs are even further from performance. I approach it in the same way as playing guitar.

    IF you are going to claim that you are doing a performance then you cannot use sync, quantise, snap, FLIP, or anything else that takes your movements and quantises them to a predetermined grid. You simply cant do that with guitar, so you shouldnt do it with anything else while claiming to be live.

    If a DJ literally cant make a mistake, because of sync and quantise then its something other than live.

    I dont actually care about any of this, if a DJ selects good music then thats all I need. But once they start claiming things about 'performance' and 'live' is when I start feeling weird about it.

    so much of modern DJing is pretending to do more than you actually are.
    but didn't you hear they make autotune for guitar

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