How to perform electronica live?

[Bambi]

Cheers for any answers!

Me and my mate are sick of looking for a band to play with so we're going it alone and taking our electro/hip hop EP on the road. It's set in a genre similar to 3OH!3 and we've recorded the songs already but...

How do you go about performing this stuff live because seeing as it's predominantly electronic it seems simple. But there must be a reason why you can't just take a CD of the backing music for the venues to play out through the PA? As its predominantly electronic backing music we're actually aiming for as little interference from us as possible - we just want to sing to the tunes. If we had to trigger the tunes from something that would be fine too.

Usually people like Ke$ha seem to have like some dude with an Apple Mac jiggin around at the back, so how do the professionals go about doing it?

Thanks! B x

 

[Seidy]

usually it goes like this:
Macbook (pro) running Ableton live and controlling it with Akai APC 40/Akai APC 20/Novation Launchpad/other midi controllers.

 

[moresound]

Then out of the PC, into a Di box, then to the PA.

 

[Minion]

Might as well just show up with the CD , Put it on , Go for Dinner and drinks , come back in an hour grab the CD and go home ...... Musical performance at it"s finest !!!

 

[Bambi]

.........................

 

[Bambi]

"Might as well just show up with the CD , Put it on , Go for Dinner and drinks , come back in an hour grab the CD and go home ...... Musical performance at it"s finest !!!"

Seeing as you've given me a nice insight into your personal talent at sarcasm, i'll give you some personal info.

I am a musician who got in so much crap last year at school because living with the motto fun comes first didn't sit well the teachers or all my (very studious) ex friends...any whooo it ultimatley led to me setting off the fire alarm, positioning myself on top of the art block and getting my ass out in a bent over fashion to display it to the entire school on the fire assembly point on the tennis courts.

So being an expelled, one friended person - Give me one frickin reason why i shouldn't give up on the full rock band search around town. Electro it is...

 

[MarVelo]

Well...that might have been a little too much information. Sorry to hear about your uh...prediciment.

I perform by rendering all my backing tracks into one .wav file and then put one track into a scene in Ableton, then use a key on my midi controller to switch scenes. I have no reason to believe you use or are familar with ableton but it is a great way to do it professional if you are so inclined. Another option is to put said tracks onto a CD and switching tracks. I have seen a rap-band perform like that very effectively.

 

[aux pause]

press play

from the sounds of your last post though get some other help, for yer mothers sake. and ask yourself this, does the word really need another 3oh!3?

watch a video of girl talk on youtube or something

its that simple

 

[Bambi]

Press play on what...is kinda the important part

 

[Bambi]

Awesome,
Yeh sorry i am a faithful ableton user.
What do you use ableton live with on stage? It seems like a macbook is almost compulsory and sadly...frickin expensive.
Also do you HAVE to have a controller and a DI box to connect to the PA? Or can you just laptop it all the way?
Cheers, and don't be sorry it was the proudest moment of my life!

ps, we really aren't intrested in having a role in playing the songs we just wana sing and don't have a mate who gives a shit enough to control the instrument aspect

 

[moresound]

Well.........you don't really need a Di box but you will need a mini 1/4 to 1/4(or an XLR) plug.
If your using a PC apposed to a mac you'll also need a ground lift plug on the power supply or you will get a good buzz in your sound.

 

[MarVelo]

Exactly what moresound said. Cheapest/easiest way is the get one of the little adapters from the hardware store that makes your 3 prong power cable and 2 prong cable. Just use any laptop available that can manage to play an audio track without exploding. You can just make a playlist in Windows Media Player (gross) or Itunes and let it rip. Plug your cable into the headphones out jack and you are a regular pop sensation.

 

[witzendoz]

I have done live shows and toured playing live dance music and the best thing we ever did was buying a Akai MPC1000, there is also a MPC500 if you don't need so many features and want to pay less money. We have all our samples and sequences stored init and their have never been any problems. It can use a memory card (which I use) or it can have a hard drive installed.

I have also toured with a laptop running ableton, great software (which I still use to write the sequences) but using a laptop sucks.

Cheers
Alan

 

[ocnor]

... just take a CD of the backing music for the venues to play out through the PA......we just want to sing to the tunes..

They have a name for that...it's called "Karaoke".

 

[marshall409]

They have a name for that...it's called "Karaoke".

Ya, get used to hearing this if you want to perform electronic music live lol.

That being said:

There are hundreds of ways (most of the basics which have already been mentioned) to go about doing this.

I would recommend you go to one of the clubs you wish to perform at and talk to the djs and maybe even try and get a good look at what theyre doing on stage.

I did sound for Steve Aoki a couple months back here in St. Catharines at L3 and he may be a huge deal in the electronic music scene but everyone was allowed to basically walk on and off the stage and dance right beside him...there were at least 3 or 4 wanna be djs watching over his shoulder the entire show.

Also, another thing I learned at the Aoki show, half these guys have no idea how theyre equipment works. They have a small "crew" (usually guys just as clueless as them) that come in and plug their serato setup into their laptop and all the dj does is press play and play with some cool knobs. Don't be one of these douches. KNOW WHAT YOUR EQUIPMENT DOES AND HOW TO USE IT before you try playing out anywhere. Otherwise when you "just hit the play button" and nothing happens, at least you know how to fix it and not look like a compelte tool....

Adam

 

[kcearl]

I wouldnt worry about a Mac...take a laptop and a spare if you have...leave the CD and a small cd player as a backup..


Ive watched quite a bit of dance music live over the years and I feel cheated if its just a couple of singers and a back up CD in a club...


Id go with ableton and have at the very least an MPD and a small midi keyboard....try to do small parts of the song live on the keyboard and even a percussion section on the MPD...this will at least connect you and the audience to what your creating

Id also remix small parts of the instrumentals on the fly...using tools like beat repeat etc..

look up articles on performing with ableton live...most electronica performers use it...almost zero use a CD for anything more than an emergency back-up

 

[witzendoz]

Back a few years before we got the Akai MPC, I had an old midi file (floppy disk) player that was plugged into a Roland Dr Groove Drum Machine (being used as a drum sound module), a Dr Sample sampler and a Proteus Sound Module. You can see us performing with this setup here, NOTE it's the live sound from the cameras. Shows what can be done with old gear.

To save weight on the next overseas tour I run the Dr Groove from a laptop with ableton and stored all the samples in ableton and sampled all the sections from the proteus in ableton. The following tour we got rid of the laptop and run all the sequencing from the MPC1000 and stored all the samples and proteus sounds in the MPC1000 as well. I still ran the Dr Groove as a drum sound module as it was going to take too long to transfer all the drum hits as samples into the MPC, but if I had it would have run the whole show.

I also have a sub mixer to run in ears for the band and able to send a mix to the FOH when the house PA is on the small side (small gigs).

All vocal, Bass and percussion was live, some guitar was triggered as the guitar player also played keys. This was great fun to play live.

Alan.