7 ms·

Instrumachines and the Evolution of Electronic Music Performance

42 points by freshbreakfast 14y ago

daviddaviddavid 14y ago
The concept reminds me of the "synthe-axe drumitar" played by Future Man from Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. http://flecktones.com/page/Futuremans-Synthaxe-Drumitar http://flecktones.com/page/Futuremans-Synthaxe-Drumitar
adamnemecek 14y ago
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.
- freshbreakfast 14y ago
  Well that's encouraging. I might need to pick me up an Abelton.
  - adamnemecek 14y ago
    Yeah, I've been dabbling with it for like 1.5 years but got more serious in the last 6 or so months and it's fucking awesome once you get over the initial hump. Also /r/edmproduction/ is your friend. And look into Tom Cosm's tutorials. Feel free to email me (it's in my profile) if you want to talk more.
- jetti 14y ago
  "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.
  - adamnemecek 14y ago
    Correct, but Ableton includes a bunch of instruments out of the box so when I said learning Ableton, I meant those as well. Furthermore, all the VSTs are not that conceptually different. Like yeah Massive and Sylenth1 are different but they still have an oscillator, envelope, LFO, filter and effects. And if you understand how synthesis works and know one well picking up the other is not that hard compared with say if you know how to play piano and want to learn to play the guitar. For me, not having frequencies overlap falls under mastering which I consider to be kind of separate but related issue. If you wanted to be in a traditional (as in, a band with 'real' instruments), you'd still have to learn that to make your music sound good in addition to learning the instrument. And I still think that learning Ableton (+VSTs) is easier than learning to play a 'real' instrument. Minus maybe the bass guitar :-). It's definitely more fun which is why I might think that it's easier. But it is true that in electronic music, mastering is probably more important. For anyone who's interested in this I can recommend this free book http://noisesculpture.com/how-to-make-a-noise-a-comprehensive-guide-to-synthesizer-programming http://noisesculpture.com/how-to-make-a-noise-a-comprehensiv... (they ask for your email).
gnosis 14y ago
Wow. That music is incredibly annoying.
- freshbreakfast 14y ago
  LOL, well didn't I say ignore the music itself?
- geuis 14y ago
  To each their own. However, it helps if you define which music you find annoying. There are 3 distinct styles of music being mixed in those videos. Araab's was one I enjoy. #2 was ok, #3 sounded bad and the guy looked like a 3 year old hitting blocks into a Fisher Price toy. Had no sense of the skill level executed by Araab and #2.
- notmarkus 14y ago
  I like it. Just saying.
freshbreakfast 14y ago
Hey guys, I wrote this thing. And I know there must be disagreements with the arguments here. Bring it on!
- diego_moita 14y ago
  But can you really dance to it? Is it fun to those just listening? My first impression is that this is just a vain and boring exhibitionism of technical virtuosity, like those fast and boring guitar players (Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, etc) or those endlessly screaming pop divas (Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, etc.) just to show off.
  - freshbreakfast 14y ago
    true, it's definitely a different kind of experience. I don't necessarily think the dance culture will diminish. But I do think there is space for the virtuosic in EDM... or maybe I should say EM ;-)
  - rdouble 14y ago
    See also turntablism, trading solos in jazz, and Paganini.
  - themckman 14y ago
    I'd be curious to know if you create music or are just a listener. It's easy for someone who doesn't actually write music to write off a lot of that as "boring exhibitionism". But if you watch those guys play or talk about music, a lot of times you genuinely get the feeling that that's just what they hear it in their head. It's just how music is supposed to be to them. I'm a guitar player myself, and don't really care for Vai/Satriani type stuff; there's just something missing. I have been getting into some more recent progressive shred and am having a hard time finding anybody that seems to really be pushing the genre forward as much as Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes. Both are extremely talented and just seem to "get it". Another guy who is right up there is Paul Ortiz. He's got some pretty serious keyboard chops, too.
- retroafroman 14y ago
lignuist 14y ago
Also revolutionized (seen that long before) the street music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a1dHCmcJzg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a1dHCmcJzg
MaggieL 14y ago
Here's such music you don't need to ignore. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTx3G6h2xyA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTx3G6h2xyA
- freshbreakfast 14y ago
  you know, i remember being obsessed with this vid when it came out. i'm embarrassed i didn't work this into the essay. i might need to...
dylanhassinger 14y ago
Controllerism has been around for awhile. I discovered it via Moldover - http://www.youtube.com/user/moldover http://www.youtube.com/user/moldover Before him, it was called "live pa"
- aphexpusher 14y ago
  thanks for clearing that up. Controllerism does not seem to be all that new to me.
  - koshatnik 14y ago
    'electronic dance music' does not seem to be all that new to me. I'm amused by the idea that something popular in Europe for decades which originated in US alternative cultures is only now catching on in US mainstream culture.
    - tb303 14y ago
      What's even more amusing is that sentiment ("electronic music is now catching on") finds its way up every decade. 80s -> Disco & House -> Pop, New Wave 90s -> House -> Pop 00s -> Electro & DnB -> Pop, Hiphop 10s -> Dubstep -> Pop, Hiphop That's just a crappy sketch but i'm sure someone could flesh it out further. The reality is that it's a continuum, things go in and out of style, what's popular changes, the audience changes, but the music never really goes away, we/you/i just don't know about it. Dubstep is simply the hair metal (80s), grunge (90s) of the times, not a statement about electronic music's popularity or unpopularity.
pfraze 14y ago
Two cool things to see on this topic: anything by beardyman (who uses a mic and processors to emulate just about any genre you want) and imogen heap's magical music gloves (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6btFObRRD9k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6btFObRRD9k)
mnicole 14y ago
Great topic! Daedelus (http://daedelusmusic.com/ 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 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.
mercuryrising 14y ago
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=baWlIzwksHs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTx3G6h2xyA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTx3G6h2xyA
rasur 14y ago
Aww, it's so sweet! Whatever next? DJ's learning to play an instrument?
- stevenameyer 14y ago
  A lot of EDM artist do play instruments. A lot of them grew up with classical training in the piano and to a fairly high level.
stevenameyer 14y ago
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 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.
- mnicole 14y ago
  I saw him play at Sasquatch in 2010 while walking back from the main stage not even intending to see his set (totally respect his talent and really enjoy the pieces he writes musically, but his genre just makes it unlistenable to me), and it was probably one of the most brilliant/memorable performances I've ever seen. I'm generally not impressed by random lighting setups because they're impersonal to the performance. Just set them up, have them go off at certain points of the music and you're done. Everything on his stage was choreographed down to a T including his own movements, and when the crowd coos and freaks over every single detail (some of us not believing what we were seeing), it just makes it all the more immersive. Even knowing that he puts such detail into his shows doesn't prepare you for what you see. None of the videos I've found online even begin to do it justice. I didn't get to see ISAM when it came through, but I'd be interested in seeing how they compare in fidelity.
  - stevenameyer 14y ago
    He is uncompromising when it comes to the quality of his live shows. It's clear he cares a lot about them and is trying to master what he does. And wether or not you like his style of music I think that people need to respect that.
tb303 14y ago
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 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.
- freshbreakfast 14y ago
  I'm not saying the earlier gen synths, controllers and laptops are any less legit than newer gen stuff. I'm thinking strictly from the fan's perspective, the non-musician's perspective, the concert-goer's perspective. That is, how visually obvious is your live performance gifts from the floor? To a digital musician, it might sound reductive. But live performance is it's own beast.
  - tb303 14y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqXayqIrAYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqXayqIrAYE =D this goes back way before "the earlier gen synths, controllers, and laptops" see my other comment. it's awesome you have come to this realization, but what i am trying to help you understand is that this is cyclical. it is not a revolution, it is how instruments evolve and has been for ages.
    - freshbreakfast 14y ago
      gotcha. yeah this vid is pretty crazy, down to the "Playing it by ear" bit.
  - aphexpusher 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
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aphexpusher 14y ago
Although I can appreciate everything said in this article I think that virtuosity is something that is unnecessary. Electronic music and its technologies are there to simplify the process of creating and performing music. Yes, this eliminates the aesthetic of physical, dexterous skill and talent but it opens things up for creativity to be unleashed without the hurdle that is virtuosity. Now this means that a lot of cliche garbage would inevitably be created and shared which is expected. I see a lot of similarities between the modern day electronic music scene and the punk era of long ago. There was a ton of punk music produced between the 70s and 80s and it is still being pumped out today like nobodies business. The majority of which is cliche and quite awful. But every once and a while you get a gem. And I think those gems are worth the effort of weeding out the trite for the great. The idea of skipping out on virtuosity and just letting creativity shine is an amazing concept. There have been a lot of fantastic punk bands without a shred of skill that have made break through productions. Beautiful music does not require dexterous fingers - though it is definitely something to be in awe of. I am rambling. Essentially what I am trying to say is that virtuosity is good and all but I think there is the flip side which is a lack of virtuosity and modern technology gives every single person the ability to make incredible music regardless of that sort of talent. With enough time grinding on a modern DAW anyone can make music to rival the heavy weights of electronic music. That in itself is a huge revelation.
whiddershins 14y ago
The grandfather of this exploration is Moldover and for the purposes of this discussion ignore his current tendecy to involve an electric guitar in his sets ... a recent development. http://moldover.com/ http://moldover.com/ http://vimeo.com/moldover/live-at-future-everything-excerpts http://vimeo.com/moldover/live-at-future-everything-excerpts He ended up designing and building his own controllers using arcade buttons. Since this is hacker news I'll point out the whole investigation is largely a technology issue. Many studies have shown that expressiveness of great instrumentalists rests on incredibly small timing variations, which ARE NOT random. Because of latency and more especially jitter in the hardware/software interface true virtuosity is either very hard or impossible to develop using most currently available tools. What the actual acceptable level of machine induced random variations are is a much debated point. This is why I pushed Lippold Haken so hard to increase the sampling rate of the continuum fingerboard to its current sub-millisecond levels. The underlying technology of the madrona soundplane can be implemented at audio rate, which, by definition, should be fast enough to obviate this need.
egypturnash 14y ago
I am not a musician and I don't keep up with production methods too closely, but this method of "load a bunch of loops into your devices, trigger them in interesting manners" sounds almost EXACTLY like what I've read about the way Orbital has been working since somewhere in the early 2000s. I think the only difference is that the price of these kinds of looping tools has dropped precipitously, so there's more people fooling with them. (And I am not trying to disrespect the musicianship of people doing this. I'm just questioning it being a NEW THING.)
- tb303 14y ago
  Not a new thing at all, you're right. Sidenote, totally trivial, but in case you care: Orbital only recently (past 5 years) moved to Ableton as a control hub, but still use a ton of outboard gear. Before that they were running the rig off Alesis MMT-8s, and famous for doing so. Those would trigger loops, yes, but they would trigger those loops in samplers, which is why most orbital tracks loops are limited to starting, stopping, looping, and getting cut up a tiny bit, not much more. The MMT-8s are essentially step sequence loopers and arrangers, kind of the most frustrating form of what the MPC-style offers. But since they were masters of them, there was no reason to switch until something better (Ableton) came along.
bane 14y ago
I guess I'm getting old, but the demo both looks and sounds like a man virtuoustically playing a pair of typewriters. More seriously, I think this is cool, but a little overblown in someways, we've technically been able to do this kind of performance (using sliced up digital samples) for a very very long time -- decades. Digital sample machines, of many kinds of forms have been used in live shows for a long time. Think of your favorite 80's new wave band and they probably had live shows with digital synth triggering samples off of a keyboard. I think this is more of a cultural shift than any kind of technological shift, but interesting nonetheless. The methods of playing these things is much more akin to being a drummer or an old school DJ scratchoff than anything else. But just like complaints about all modern music being overcompressed, these guys have to work off of only two performance vectors: sick beats and cool samples. There's no dynamics in the performance or playing with tonality. Glissando, spicatto, breath control, tonguing, etc. are all right out the window. Music has been reduced to learning and playback a la guitar hero. A generation of musicians, messing around with samples from music they themselves could never perform. We talk a lot about technology we no longer have the means to make and knowledge lost in fires and wars and natural decay, and toy with that idea in sci-fi and real life. However, today we certainly have a much greater pantheon of fantastic accomplishments in these areas. But I wonder if we should consider a similar phenomenon with culture and cultural skills? We may be entering a time were previous cultural knowledge, like how to play piano virtuostically is lost, exchanged with how to play a sampler at similar high levels of skill. We may have lost the means to transmit that culture forward to future generations, but outside of a vague sense of loss, nobody really cares because what we have now is also vast and complex and has its own set of interesting skills that need to transmit forward. Is this the cultural equivalent of cleaning out the memetic closet to make room for new stuff?
- randy909 14y ago
  Totally with you up until the lost culture thing. More people know how to play the piano virtuostically than ever. Culture is expanding and being recorded permanently in the digital world. How are we losing it? It reminds me of what the blue-man-group does. It's novel, a few people make a lot of money doing it, but it's not the next electric guitar by any stretch. I think one of the core attributes of EDM is that it is performed by machines. The MPC-live thing seems like an effort to step backwards just to have something to do on stage. I'd rather listen to someone mix a 808/909/303 live. The subtle timing and tuning shifts they make are a thing of beauty (and laptops don't do this). But that's probably just my preference for techno over hip-hop/dubstep coming through. Anyway, good article regardless.

The concept reminds me of the "synthe-axe drumitar" played by Future Man from Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. http://flecktones.com/page/Futuremans-Synthaxe-Drumitar http://flecktones.com/page/Futuremans-Synthaxe-Drumitar

adamnemecek 14y ago

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.

freshbreakfast 14y ago
Well that's encouraging. I might need to pick me up an Abelton.
- adamnemecek 14y ago
  Yeah, I've been dabbling with it for like 1.5 years but got more serious in the last 6 or so months and it's fucking awesome once you get over the initial hump. Also /r/edmproduction/ is your friend. And look into Tom Cosm's tutorials. Feel free to email me (it's in my profile) if you want to talk more.
jetti 14y ago
"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.
- adamnemecek 14y ago
  Correct, but Ableton includes a bunch of instruments out of the box so when I said learning Ableton, I meant those as well. Furthermore, all the VSTs are not that conceptually different. Like yeah Massive and Sylenth1 are different but they still have an oscillator, envelope, LFO, filter and effects. And if you understand how synthesis works and know one well picking up the other is not that hard compared with say if you know how to play piano and want to learn to play the guitar. For me, not having frequencies overlap falls under mastering which I consider to be kind of separate but related issue. If you wanted to be in a traditional (as in, a band with 'real' instruments), you'd still have to learn that to make your music sound good in addition to learning the instrument. And I still think that learning Ableton (+VSTs) is easier than learning to play a 'real' instrument. Minus maybe the bass guitar :-). It's definitely more fun which is why I might think that it's easier. But it is true that in electronic music, mastering is probably more important. For anyone who's interested in this I can recommend this free book http://noisesculpture.com/how-to-make-a-noise-a-comprehensive-guide-to-synthesizer-programming http://noisesculpture.com/how-to-make-a-noise-a-comprehensiv... (they ask for your email).

gnosis 14y ago

Wow. That music is incredibly annoying.

freshbreakfast 14y ago
LOL, well didn't I say ignore the music itself?
geuis 14y ago
To each their own. However, it helps if you define which music you find annoying. There are 3 distinct styles of music being mixed in those videos. Araab's was one I enjoy. #2 was ok, #3 sounded bad and the guy looked like a 3 year old hitting blocks into a Fisher Price toy. Had no sense of the skill level executed by Araab and #2.
notmarkus 14y ago
I like it. Just saying.

freshbreakfast 14y ago

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

diego_moita 14y ago
But can you really dance to it? Is it fun to those just listening? My first impression is that this is just a vain and boring exhibitionism of technical virtuosity, like those fast and boring guitar players (Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, etc) or those endlessly screaming pop divas (Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, etc.) just to show off.
- freshbreakfast 14y ago
  true, it's definitely a different kind of experience. I don't necessarily think the dance culture will diminish. But I do think there is space for the virtuosic in EDM... or maybe I should say EM ;-)
- rdouble 14y ago
  See also turntablism, trading solos in jazz, and Paganini.
- themckman 14y ago
  I'd be curious to know if you create music or are just a listener. It's easy for someone who doesn't actually write music to write off a lot of that as "boring exhibitionism". But if you watch those guys play or talk about music, a lot of times you genuinely get the feeling that that's just what they hear it in their head. It's just how music is supposed to be to them. I'm a guitar player myself, and don't really care for Vai/Satriani type stuff; there's just something missing. I have been getting into some more recent progressive shred and am having a hard time finding anybody that seems to really be pushing the genre forward as much as Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes. Both are extremely talented and just seem to "get it". Another guy who is right up there is Paul Ortiz. He's got some pretty serious keyboard chops, too.
retroafroman 14y ago

lignuist 14y ago

Also revolutionized (seen that long before) the street music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a1dHCmcJzg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a1dHCmcJzg

MaggieL 14y ago

Here's such music you don't need to ignore. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTx3G6h2xyA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTx3G6h2xyA

freshbreakfast 14y ago
you know, i remember being obsessed with this vid when it came out. i'm embarrassed i didn't work this into the essay. i might need to...

dylanhassinger 14y ago

Controllerism has been around for awhile. I discovered it via Moldover - http://www.youtube.com/user/moldover http://www.youtube.com/user/moldover Before him, it was called "live pa"

aphexpusher 14y ago
thanks for clearing that up. Controllerism does not seem to be all that new to me.
- koshatnik 14y ago
  'electronic dance music' does not seem to be all that new to me. I'm amused by the idea that something popular in Europe for decades which originated in US alternative cultures is only now catching on in US mainstream culture.
  - tb303 14y ago
    What's even more amusing is that sentiment ("electronic music is now catching on") finds its way up every decade. 80s -> Disco & House -> Pop, New Wave 90s -> House -> Pop 00s -> Electro & DnB -> Pop, Hiphop 10s -> Dubstep -> Pop, Hiphop That's just a crappy sketch but i'm sure someone could flesh it out further. The reality is that it's a continuum, things go in and out of style, what's popular changes, the audience changes, but the music never really goes away, we/you/i just don't know about it. Dubstep is simply the hair metal (80s), grunge (90s) of the times, not a statement about electronic music's popularity or unpopularity.

pfraze 14y ago

Two cool things to see on this topic: anything by beardyman (who uses a mic and processors to emulate just about any genre you want) and imogen heap's magical music gloves (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6btFObRRD9k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6btFObRRD9k)

mnicole 14y ago

Great topic! Daedelus (http://daedelusmusic.com/ 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 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.

mercuryrising 14y ago

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

rasur 14y ago

Aww, it's so sweet! Whatever next? DJ's learning to play an instrument?

stevenameyer 14y ago
A lot of EDM artist do play instruments. A lot of them grew up with classical training in the piano and to a fairly high level.

stevenameyer 14y ago

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 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.

mnicole 14y ago
I saw him play at Sasquatch in 2010 while walking back from the main stage not even intending to see his set (totally respect his talent and really enjoy the pieces he writes musically, but his genre just makes it unlistenable to me), and it was probably one of the most brilliant/memorable performances I've ever seen. I'm generally not impressed by random lighting setups because they're impersonal to the performance. Just set them up, have them go off at certain points of the music and you're done. Everything on his stage was choreographed down to a T including his own movements, and when the crowd coos and freaks over every single detail (some of us not believing what we were seeing), it just makes it all the more immersive. Even knowing that he puts such detail into his shows doesn't prepare you for what you see. None of the videos I've found online even begin to do it justice. I didn't get to see ISAM when it came through, but I'd be interested in seeing how they compare in fidelity.
- stevenameyer 14y ago
  He is uncompromising when it comes to the quality of his live shows. It's clear he cares a lot about them and is trying to master what he does. And wether or not you like his style of music I think that people need to respect that.

tb303 14y ago

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 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.

freshbreakfast 14y ago
I'm not saying the earlier gen synths, controllers and laptops are any less legit than newer gen stuff. I'm thinking strictly from the fan's perspective, the non-musician's perspective, the concert-goer's perspective. That is, how visually obvious is your live performance gifts from the floor? To a digital musician, it might sound reductive. But live performance is it's own beast.
- tb303 14y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqXayqIrAYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqXayqIrAYE =D this goes back way before "the earlier gen synths, controllers, and laptops" see my other comment. it's awesome you have come to this realization, but what i am trying to help you understand is that this is cyclical. it is not a revolution, it is how instruments evolve and has been for ages.
  - freshbreakfast 14y ago
    gotcha. yeah this vid is pretty crazy, down to the "Playing it by ear" bit.
- aphexpusher 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

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aphexpusher 14y ago

Although I can appreciate everything said in this article I think that virtuosity is something that is unnecessary. Electronic music and its technologies are there to simplify the process of creating and performing music. Yes, this eliminates the aesthetic of physical, dexterous skill and talent but it opens things up for creativity to be unleashed without the hurdle that is virtuosity. Now this means that a lot of cliche garbage would inevitably be created and shared which is expected. I see a lot of similarities between the modern day electronic music scene and the punk era of long ago. There was a ton of punk music produced between the 70s and 80s and it is still being pumped out today like nobodies business. The majority of which is cliche and quite awful. But every once and a while you get a gem. And I think those gems are worth the effort of weeding out the trite for the great. The idea of skipping out on virtuosity and just letting creativity shine is an amazing concept. There have been a lot of fantastic punk bands without a shred of skill that have made break through productions. Beautiful music does not require dexterous fingers - though it is definitely something to be in awe of. I am rambling. Essentially what I am trying to say is that virtuosity is good and all but I think there is the flip side which is a lack of virtuosity and modern technology gives every single person the ability to make incredible music regardless of that sort of talent. With enough time grinding on a modern DAW anyone can make music to rival the heavy weights of electronic music. That in itself is a huge revelation.

whiddershins 14y ago

The grandfather of this exploration is Moldover and for the purposes of this discussion ignore his current tendecy to involve an electric guitar in his sets ... a recent development. http://moldover.com/ http://moldover.com/ http://vimeo.com/moldover/live-at-future-everything-excerpts http://vimeo.com/moldover/live-at-future-everything-excerpts He ended up designing and building his own controllers using arcade buttons. Since this is hacker news I'll point out the whole investigation is largely a technology issue. Many studies have shown that expressiveness of great instrumentalists rests on incredibly small timing variations, which ARE NOT random. Because of latency and more especially jitter in the hardware/software interface true virtuosity is either very hard or impossible to develop using most currently available tools. What the actual acceptable level of machine induced random variations are is a much debated point. This is why I pushed Lippold Haken so hard to increase the sampling rate of the continuum fingerboard to its current sub-millisecond levels. The underlying technology of the madrona soundplane can be implemented at audio rate, which, by definition, should be fast enough to obviate this need.

egypturnash 14y ago

I am not a musician and I don't keep up with production methods too closely, but this method of "load a bunch of loops into your devices, trigger them in interesting manners" sounds almost EXACTLY like what I've read about the way Orbital has been working since somewhere in the early 2000s. I think the only difference is that the price of these kinds of looping tools has dropped precipitously, so there's more people fooling with them. (And I am not trying to disrespect the musicianship of people doing this. I'm just questioning it being a NEW THING.)

tb303 14y ago
Not a new thing at all, you're right. Sidenote, totally trivial, but in case you care: Orbital only recently (past 5 years) moved to Ableton as a control hub, but still use a ton of outboard gear. Before that they were running the rig off Alesis MMT-8s, and famous for doing so. Those would trigger loops, yes, but they would trigger those loops in samplers, which is why most orbital tracks loops are limited to starting, stopping, looping, and getting cut up a tiny bit, not much more. The MMT-8s are essentially step sequence loopers and arrangers, kind of the most frustrating form of what the MPC-style offers. But since they were masters of them, there was no reason to switch until something better (Ableton) came along.

bane 14y ago

I guess I'm getting old, but the demo both looks and sounds like a man virtuoustically playing a pair of typewriters. More seriously, I think this is cool, but a little overblown in someways, we've technically been able to do this kind of performance (using sliced up digital samples) for a very very long time -- decades. Digital sample machines, of many kinds of forms have been used in live shows for a long time. Think of your favorite 80's new wave band and they probably had live shows with digital synth triggering samples off of a keyboard. I think this is more of a cultural shift than any kind of technological shift, but interesting nonetheless. The methods of playing these things is much more akin to being a drummer or an old school DJ scratchoff than anything else. But just like complaints about all modern music being overcompressed, these guys have to work off of only two performance vectors: sick beats and cool samples. There's no dynamics in the performance or playing with tonality. Glissando, spicatto, breath control, tonguing, etc. are all right out the window. Music has been reduced to learning and playback a la guitar hero. A generation of musicians, messing around with samples from music they themselves could never perform. We talk a lot about technology we no longer have the means to make and knowledge lost in fires and wars and natural decay, and toy with that idea in sci-fi and real life. However, today we certainly have a much greater pantheon of fantastic accomplishments in these areas. But I wonder if we should consider a similar phenomenon with culture and cultural skills? We may be entering a time were previous cultural knowledge, like how to play piano virtuostically is lost, exchanged with how to play a sampler at similar high levels of skill. We may have lost the means to transmit that culture forward to future generations, but outside of a vague sense of loss, nobody really cares because what we have now is also vast and complex and has its own set of interesting skills that need to transmit forward. Is this the cultural equivalent of cleaning out the memetic closet to make room for new stuff?

randy909 14y ago
Totally with you up until the lost culture thing. More people know how to play the piano virtuostically than ever. Culture is expanding and being recorded permanently in the digital world. How are we losing it? It reminds me of what the blue-man-group does. It's novel, a few people make a lot of money doing it, but it's not the next electric guitar by any stretch. I think one of the core attributes of EDM is that it is performed by machines. The MPC-live thing seems like an effort to step backwards just to have something to do on stage. I'd rather listen to someone mix a 808/909/303 live. The subtle timing and tuning shifts they make are a thing of beauty (and laptops don't do this). But that's probably just my preference for techno over hip-hop/dubstep coming through. Anyway, good article regardless.