Transitioning to live

The Studio
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So I’m a studio monkey, making EDM with my DAW and keyboard and whatnot, but I’m kind of itching to play live again. I don’t do a lot of sampling dj stuff or remixing - just original.

So the question is, how does one translate that to live? I am by no means a virtuoso on the keyboard and my vocals need a lot of post-processing. I’ve heard some artists just hit play and twiddle some knobs and dry heave to the beat which seems a bit disingenuous to me but I’m curious what other people do.

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Man, so many ways to think about, and actually undertake playing live, it makes ones head spin.

First off, some places you could try and start.
Ultimately, it depends on what you want out of your live performance i think, and what you’re comfortable with.

I’m assuming this would be a solo performance, so more than likely, for you, this would probably involve either DJing and learning how to DJ, doing a more generic live style electronic approach ( likely some combination of launchpad, backing tracks, external gear, midi controllers etc), or a combination of both that and DJing.

A good place to start would honestly be just playing your track in the daw, and then finding ways to perform live different aspects of it with your controllers or outboard gear. Here are some really easy examples:

  • play a drum part with a pad or midi keyboard while the rest of your track plays
  • play a synth line or some sort of melodic part the same way
  • bounce your drums or backing elements to loops and trigger them with some sort of controller the same way (there’s a pattern here).
  • Sing your vocal lines live over the track (use effects and processing if you need), combine this with your midi controllers to play or trigger certain parts of the track for bonus points.
  • instead of relying on automation for filters, effects, things like that, control those in real time (this for a solo gig probably would be better suited to the DJ method, but there is obviously plenty of overlap with the other style).

I would honestly start with those and just play around. Figure out what your DAW or whatever software you’re using gives you as far as options for simplifying parts you don’t plan on controlling live, and just tinker.

Bonus tip: Try and find some videos of other artists you like performing live, or talking about their live setups, and see what they’re using and how they go about the process.

I know this is generic advice, but i really think it is the best starting place. Once you have a rough flow going, you can start to experiment with things such as:

  • improvising
  • changing instruments for certain parts
  • modifying the arrangement
  • moving from track to track

Since you asked, they way i approach about live performances kinda goes like this:

General:

  • i don’t really want to DJ, or have the track sound exactly the same live as it does in album
  • i want to reduce or nullify elements that would just trigger and play on their own, so i try to rework parts of tracks to make it all controllable by me in real time.
  • I will “re-write” the track so that while it is the same track, the way it is controlled and sounds is different
  • practice practice practice practice!!!

For my solo work (Guy Wachtel)

  • I like raw improvisation, so sometimes when I’m working on sets i will just wing it and go somewhere completely new. Usually this means almost just like jamming on my modular and outboard gear to create new tracks or ideas that are not part of my actual catalogue.

For Make Us Whole (Mine and my sisters project)

  • I like having a band with this project, so I recruit people i know to play instruments such as drums, synths, guitar etc, and I divide up the parts to different people so that each part is performed by someone.
  • The above means i will do things like change a synth lead to a guitar part, or instead of sequenced drums, i will have the drummer play the part live and switch some of it up, (depending on the track or section, sometimes i want to maintain that tight quantized electronic sound or keep the same samples, etc.)
  • we do role switching, and I usually switch instruments depending on the track or the section of the track. Everyone else does this as well, and has access to a few different instruments for different songs and parts in each song.
  • I will again, modify and re-write sections of the tracks to work better with whatever live instruments and gear are being used at the time
  • I will also re-work entire tracks depending on where they fall in the setlist. This is very context specific.

Hope this has been helpful. Let us know if you have other, or more specific questions. Good luck!

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Ah, this is what livecoding is made for :smiley:

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Two fair assumptions: the baseline live performance is show up and hit play on a track you wrote (sad and cringy but it happens), and there’s no way you can play all the parts live.

So pick the elements of your tracks that are interesting or expressive and control those things - that’s the ‘performance’. Nobody expects or wants you to play 64 bars of arpeggio backing track, they don’t need you to trigger drum changes live (unless that’s specifically what’s interesting). It’s an electronic show, people expect those things to be background and automated from a solo performer, but they also expect a performance and not just pressing play.

It’s up to you to decide what’s interesting about your music in a live setting and push those things forward to engage the people watching. I think @Guy_Wachtel has done a great job covering some of the starting points.

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Awesome advice, thanks! I used to play live in rock/punk bands so I’m not a stranger to being on stage but it hit me that I probably can’t play the 40 different tracks in each song at the same time.