What exactly is a live performance?

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-- What exactly is a live performance?

Posted by minski on Dec-15-2005 00:33:

What exactly is a live performance?

Taken from HIT magazine 15/12/2005

quote:

Confusion surrounds Richie Hawtin's "live" date at Belfast on New Years Eve.
Many assumed Hawtin would be following CJ Bolland and Oliver Lieb's example of previous years with a vintage live set. But the techno renegade will actually be playing on his laptop as a DJ, albeit with software that enables him to improvise. Hawtin promises to revisit some of his classics in the spirit of Belfast.
"Unfortunately there is no live component" he says. "I think there were some misannouncements or something about me doing a live set down there. Im basically coming to do the Belfast show where I'm playing classics from the past 10 to 15 years of electronic music, including many of my own. Im definitely playing computers to play back some things, but it really shouldnt be confused with any type of live set, coz thats something completely different and something which is not really ready to leave my house yet, let alone go all the way down to Australia!"
The mixup no doubt stems from the new technologies that are rendering such terms as "DJ", "live" and "semi-live" redundant. Hawtin is working towards a proper live show that he says will be "a little bit more theatrical".

Now I believe that the mixup in terms of a live performance was misinterpreted by people as in looking at the poster I have for belfast this year it says he'll "be playing 3 hours fusing between LIVE and FINAL SCRATCH". Could they be referring to Ableton Live in their use of LIVE?

But what I really wanted to know was what is the proper definition of a live set. I always thought a live performance was where the person was actually there, and so if they said someone was live it sounded a bit like "duh of course theyre there". The way Richie was talking though, sounds like Im wrong.

What exactly is a live performance, a live set, and the difference between the one Richie Hawtin has planned for Belfast this year?

Posted by pkcRAISTLIN on Dec-15-2005 00:35:

go see soups\' mum in amsterdam.

Posted by Aesthetic on Dec-15-2005 00:37:

A live performance is when a dj press's play in winamp and acts like hes playing music at 135 bpm for hours on end.

Also - see soups' mother in amsterdamn as stated, thats the other side of the coin.

Posted by Teflon_Teapot on Dec-15-2005 01:06:

as far as i know a live set is using a laptop with various loops, samples, beats and fusing them together into a performance. a live set will generally also have a midi controller, and possibly an electronic organ or even an electronic drum machine. it all really depends on who you are going to see and what they define as live.

Posted by minski on Dec-15-2005 01:37:

Fair enough. So the live part means they are sort of making the track live with the drum machine etc. That makes a bit more sense.

So a live set for a producer and a DJ are two different things?

Posted by Nyquist_Theorem on Dec-15-2005 10:49:

how long is a piece of string?

for anyone interested, historians have carbon-dated this particular thread as the first evidence of human debate on the internet concerning the issue:

http://www.moby.org/info/moby_thread

not much has changed since.

Posted by minski on Dec-15-2005 11:02:

quote:
Originally posted by Nyquist_Theorem
how long is a piece of string?

for anyone interested, historians have carbon-dated this particular thread as the first evidence of human debate on the internet concerning the issue:

http://www.moby.org/info/moby_thread

not much has changed since.

Read about 1/4 of the way through that page and it took me ages, But okay I get your point, lol. So theres no real definition for it. And I sense a never-ending debate

Posted by ONION on Dec-15-2005 11:15:

A "Live" performance whether done with actual hardware gear or software isnt exactly "Live"... meaning that there are certain elements of the set being played which arent all done in REAL TIME... These are called loops, and most of the loops are basically the percussion / drums parts of the tracks... they are PRE PROGRAMMED. It can even be a bassline riff used over and over....

The actual LIVE part of the set is the "tweaking" - playing with the cut off freq... or the ADSR... or even just playing an instrument live on top of the loops being played... The difference b/w a 'traditional' DJ set from a "LIVE" set is that in a Live set there more parameters that one can control to change the sound... where as in DJing youre controlling only the pitch and volume

Obviously now DJs are getting effects units and doing all sorts of creative shit which narrows the gap b/w the two...

Posted by Nyquist_Theorem on Dec-15-2005 11:36:

quote:
Originally posted by minski
Read about 1/4 of the way through that page and it took me ages, But okay I get your point, lol. So theres no real definition for it. And I sense a never-ending debate

pretty much.

because electronic dance music has as one of its most basic building blocks electronically (re)produced rhythm, you'll never really get 100% live in the way you might with say jazz or rock. and, since there always has to be one or more real people at the controls of any sort of dance music event (Kraftwerk tours notwithstanding), you'll never really get 100% automated, either. everything else falls in between, in to that grey area of turntables, CD players, sequencers, synthesizers, samplers, DAT machines, laptops, drum machines, vocoders, theremins (theremi?) and every other bit of audio hardware you can imagine.

That said, with a little prodding this thread should still balloon out nicely like so many other of the endless/ongoing debates on this forum.

Posted by Dr_Octopussy on Dec-15-2005 11:36:

Go see a band , thats the only thing 100% live.