Latest live performance PodPosts...

The release of the game Guitar Hero II seems to have been greeted with enthusiasm by a wide range of musically-oriented individuals; Joseph Pisano gives it a review on his blog, and is impressed by its addictive rockability. Rafael Mizrahi and Tal Chalozin have taken their interest to another level by creating a headless android that can play the game for you.

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The Moscow Laptop Cyber Orchestra, or CybOrk, is a collective dedicated to exploring and expanding the possibilities of live interaction between musicians using a variety of electronic systems and controllers. Having just celebrated its first anniversary, the project features a core group of regular performers, with additional collaborators and guest contributors frequently getting involved.

Although the performers do use a lot of pre-sequenced/recorded material, the live performances are more interactive and dynamic than the average laptop concert. In fact, the performance is treated like a sort of philharmonic cyber-jam – live sessions are recorded acoustically, as if each musician was playing a traditional instrument within an orchestra. Samples of their performances are available in mp3 format on the Cyber Orchestra website.

The decline of CD sales worldwide has the music industry shipping water in a well-rocked boat; how the big fish decide to deal with current sea-changes in the public’s consumption of music will ultimately determine if they sink or swim.

At the moment, brick-and-mortar music retail stores are swimming like… well, bricks. Sales of compact discs in the US for the first three months of 2007 were 20% lower than the same period last year; that’s 89 million CDs in Q1 2007 compared to 112 million in Q1 2006. In the UK, the British Phonographic Society reported that sales fell by 10% in the first half of this year. Furthermore, the entry of supermarkets into the fray has scuppered the profitability of many dedicated stores. In 2000, there were 967 independent outlets in the UK – this has now fallen to 687.

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If you are a DIY type of electronic musician, you might feel that many software applications can’t quite do everything you want them to; or perhaps they do so much that the functions you want are obscured by those you don’t.

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The very futuristic ReacTable, developed by the music technology group in the Univesitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, is to be used by Bjork on her “Volta” tour. In their press release, the group decribe the device as a “tabletop tangible multi-touch interface”. They then go on to describe its use – “several musicians share control of the instrument by moving and caressing objects on a luminous table”. This, I’ll admit, does sound interesting.

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The Evolution Control Committee has expanded on its discovery of a new element (Thimbletronium) by constructing a glove-device which takes advantage of Thimbletronium’s unique properties to deliver copyright-crushing live performances. TradeMark G will be using the MIDI glove on stage at the Maker Faire.

ECC also has some interesting advice to offer Napster listeners – if you run a search for mp3s with a title of ‘mic in track’ you will find a host of recordings that were made by users themselves directly from their computer’s microphone input. Although the quality of these is understandably terrible, a few amusing gems may turn up in the debris.

The Maker Faire is also hosting the 2007 Cassette Jockey Championships – where CJs from around the world can strut their stuff using any sort of device that plays analog cassettes. Expect a myriad of bizarre souped-up tape decks and a whole lot of lead-in antics. More details on this event can be found at Create Digital Music as well as on the Maker Faire site itself.

I wonder if the Thimbletron will feature in Sonic State’s upcoming 20 Weirdest Instruments feature… at the moment, they’re almost done wrapping up their list of the greatest synths, as voted by those who used them most…

Computers have been involved with the process of music creation for some time now, in a variety of different capacities – most often as an audio sequencing or effect processing tool. However, Christopher Raphael of the University of Indiana has demonstrated a program which is capable of performing live, in time with a human instrumentalist, without missing a beat.

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Once you have decided on the ideal laptop for your gig, you’ll need to set it up the way you like it. If you are running on batteries (as mentioned before, sometimes having your laptop plugged into the mains can generate an unpleasant humming noise, or ground loop) the you had better make sure that any ‘power saving’ features of your machine are disabled, such as PowerNow or Speedstep. Although these do prolong battery life, you need your machine running at full power during a gig – a momentary glitch in your audio can ruin a track and really throw your confidence. Basically, such power saving techniques rely on reducing the processor speed when the tasks you are running don’t require much work – which is fine if you’re just writing an article or browsing the Internet. However, if you’re running a sequencer where only one or two tracks are playing, and suddenly the song takes off with a whole bunch of new samples and plugins kicking in all at once, then there’s going to be a huge spike in processing which the power management might not be able to keep up with – leaving you a nasty blip to contend with.

Also, it is wise to disable any screensavers or unnecessary background/scheduling tasks that might sap your computer’s punch. However, as an addendum to the previous article on choosing a laptop for live performance, I would say that for most purposes, even the lowest-end computer nowadays is more than capable of doing a decent job. In fact, it will be more powerful than anything available five years ago, and although it’s always nice to have the best there is, in reality most musicians won’t come anywhere near pushing the limits of what their hardware can do. The most important thing is to make sure it’s set up correctly. If you’re using Windows XP, have a look at the optimisation guide to see what you can do to make the most of your OS.

For a few more observations on live laptops and ASIO, have a look at rekliner.

The primary concern of a laptop musician when performing live is reliability. Your hardware simply has to be able to deliver rock-solid performance, time after time, so that you can concentrate on your set and not worry about catastrophic crash scenarios. This is one reason why so many performers like dedicated outboard hardware – it just doesn’t crash. However, the amazing power, convenience and malleability of software emulation is really hard to beat once you get it right.

The first choice is whether to go Mac or PC. This will probably be determined by which you are most used to. Macs have a reputation for being more reliable, but they can (and do) crash. You still have to be careful about how you implement your software and settings.

Here are some things to consider when purchasing a PC laptop to take you through the toughest of club nights:

• Battery life: make sure it’s long enough – laptops can generate a ground loop buzz when powered from the mains.
• Chipset: research the chipset/motherboard for features and reliability – try to get one with a Texas Instruments Firewire controller if you plan on using Firewire equipment.
• Memory: at least 1GB, preferably 2GB – and FSB speed is important too, the higher the better.
• Cache: bigger cache is better, especially if you use a lot of memory-intensive material (large audio samples or streaming).
• Hard disk: 7200rpm SATA will do nicely, the larger the better – if you can get a second hard drive in there, then do (very good if you use a lot of audio, not important if you only use MIDI).
• Processor: at the moment, Intel Core 2 Duo is the way to go. AMD still offer excellent price/performance, but the performance crown has now been wrested away from them by Intel’s latest dual-core offering. Get the 4MB cache version if you can.
• Graphics: avoid shared/integrated graphics solutions if possible – get a dedicated video card that has its own memory, so that it doesn’t take some of your RAM.
• Sound: laptops have poor sound, so you’ll be using an external sound card anyway, either USB or Firewire.

This is a very broad outline of what you need to look out for, and i’ll be posting a more detailed analysis in the Podcomplex PC Guide section soon. In the meantime, you can check out Tom’s Hardware or Sound on Sound for good equipment reviews.

Regarding the gig I played last night, I feel it was certainly a worthwhile ‘experiment’ – however, the first thing I would change was the fact that I didn’t have a microphone. Even if you have no intention of singing, it can make a huge difference to a performance (particularly in a more intimate venue) if you can talk to the audience, and maybe tell them a bit about what you’re doing. This is important when you are playing a guitar that is making noises like a bag of rastafarian pandas being run over by a herd of tin elephants, rather than the usual plucked string sounds that people are generally used to.

Following the theme of yesterday’s post, I have a gig tonight where I will be playing my Roland GR-33 guitar synth live for the first time. In the past, I have played gigs in the more ‘traditional’ format of the laptop musician – that is, with a laptop and MIDI keyboard. Although this is fine for the purposes of control, it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of audience experience – there is no real way for the listeners to connect your movements to the music that they are hearing, and in many cases, you might just as well be checking your email.

But how ‘live’ can electronic music be anyway? Well, that depends on a lot of things – what sort of music it is, the personality of the musician, how extravagant a stage show you want to put on, the expectations of the audience… sitting watching some guy staring at his laptop and wiggling his mouse around is quite a different experience from a Daft Punk gig, even if the music might be very similar.

The difference comes down to whether it is effectively a ‘live’ set or a ‘DJ’ set – are you playing back songs and putting different bits through filters, or are you actually performing something that wasn’t pre-recorded? If it’s the latter, then the audience would like to see what it is you’re doing. If it’s the former, they probably couldn’t care less (unless they’re musicians themselves).

It takes a lot more effort to bring a guitar rig on tour than to just slip a laptop and keyboard in your backpack, so i’ll be interested to see how this new technique works out, and if it’s worth that extra workload.

I’ll be using a Fender Strat with GK-2A pickup plugged into a Roland GR-33 guitar synth. This will be patched through a Boss RC-2 loop station into my Hercules 16/12 FW sound card, which is of course connected to my laptop. I’ve set up the guitar so that certain notes on the sixth string activate Reason’s transport controls, which allows me to start/stop the sequencer, set loops and so on. Then, I can switch between playing straight guitar sounds, the GR-33 synth sounds and Reason’s own sounds – without needing any controller other than the guitar itself. And, if the worst happens and the computer crashes, I’ll still have the Roland to fall back on…