Month: December 2016

Unit 9 – Developing Performance + Production Skills

December 16, 2016 — Leave a comment

Week 1

The starting week to our live performance project was spent learning how to use Ableton Live 9. The key technique we learnt was how to warp audio files; essential for remixing and performing live tracks. We was introduced to the hardware equipment such as the Akai MPC 5000 and the Dave Smith Prophet. We was assigned to our groups for this project. I was in a group with Yellow Panther who is a Trap producer. We made a great group because although we produce different genres of music from each other, we’re both drawn to darker and moodier themes, so it wasn’t hard for us to agree on anything in the project. We was instructed that we would have to bounce each channel in our Futureshock remix tracks into 8 bar stems as we should be performing the remix live, and will need them to do this. In essence, the first week was dedicated towards familiarising ourselves with the tools we had, and creating a foundation for our projects to stem from.

Week 2

Week  2 was used to shorten our remixes into 8-bar loops per channel to include all elements of track in a summarised package. Each track would be bounced individually into stems, ready to import onto Ableton. We then had to warp all of our samples to the same BPM (80 in our case) so that they would all be in time. Because 165 BPM (the BPM that my remix was) is so much faster than 80, it made more sense to me to just warp them down to 160 as the rhythms will still feel pretty much the same, and the distortion from stretching a digital file would be kept to a minimum. This process took a long time because my track used a lot of channels (20+ channels), so eventually I ended up having to decide which sounds I could realistically see us using. This process ended up taking up our entire lesson time, so we had to import our stems into Ableton in our own time.

Week 3

Week 3 was our opportunity to utilise the equipment at the front of the synth lab. This equipment included Korg Volcas, Roland V-Synth, Akai MPC, Moog Bass Synth, mixer, speakers and midi controllers. We imported our own drum kits and chopped samples into the MPC so we could play the MPC like a controller. We spent this week getting to grips with the equipment. We explored a range of different settings on each piece of equipment throughout the lesson to try to understand the types of sounds that could be created, and to identify which equipment is appropriate for selected types of sounds. This was our first experience of actually playing hardware together, so it was a learning curve in terms of co-ordinating each other, musically-speaking.

Week 4

In week 4, we used the main equipment in the centre of the synth lab, which is essentially the same as the setup at the front of the room, except it does not have a V-Synth or a Moog. By this point, we was understanding how to use the equipment properly and manage to peform legitimate tracks with them. At this point, we were getting used to playing together, so we began understanding each other’s different styles, which meant that we was gradually realising what worked musically and what did not. We tried to remember chords and drum patterns worked, and acted immediately if we did not, and just switched up our sequence without second-guessing ourselves.

Week 5

By week 5, we had already experienced all of the equipment avaliable to us, and decided to start narrowing down which equipment we liked and which we did not like in order to maximise our focus onto equipment we was definitely going to use. We decided that we was definitely going to use the V-Synth, MPC 5000 and Korg Volca Beats, however we was also considering using the Dave Smith Prophet 9, Moog Sub 37, Korg Volca Bass, and an Alesis MIDI Keyboard, but weren’t entirely sure as the sounds that those instruments created didn’t exactly resonate with us. Like Week 4, we jammed out during this week as well. As you’d expect, our teamwork and co-ordination skills were improving as we was realising more and more about each other’s musical styles.

Week 6

Week 6 was spent noting the settings and presets we liked on all of the equipment we was planning to use so that we would be immediately to jam out on the day of the performance, and not have to worry about being forced to work with bad sounds. We eventually decided that every piece of equipment that we was sceptical over using on the previous week would no longer be used by us for this project as we felt it made more sense to maximise our time mastering the equipment with sounds that we knew we liked than sacrificing time on sounds that aren’t stimulating for us that we’d probably drop later down the line anyway. Like the previous two weeks, we also jammed out on this week. We began memorising sequences and chords we were playing, so that we could form actual songs.

Week 7

Week 7 was our final week for practising. On this week, we incorporated Ableton into the rig to include some of our samples as melodic elements on the tracks that we had been practising in previous weeks. Our use of the samples was meant to be stripped-back and minimalistic because neither of us really liked our remixes that much, and were more keen to experiment and use the equipment to make something new. This opened doors for our creative potential to be reached without being restricted by essentially carbon-copying previous work, which felt natural. To ensure that they were clearly remixes, we decided to select samples that were prominent in both the original Futureshock track, and our own remixes. We also made final decisions on the presets we would be using on the day of the performance, as well as which of our own samples to use.

Performance Day

On the day of the performance, we arrived to college early (9AM) so that we had plenty of time to prepare the equipment for the event, which would start at 11:30AM. The first step was to transport the equipment from the music department downstairs into the cafeteria. The equipment included;

– Apple Mac w/ Ableton Live 9 installed
– Ableton Push
– 12 Channel Mixing Desk
– Korg Volca Beats
– Korg Volca Bass
– Korg Volca Keys
– Korg Kaoss Pad
– Roland V-Synth
– Roland Octo-Pad
– QSC Active Speakers (x3) (1 monitor, 2 main)
– Peavey Amplifier
– M-Audio Keystation 49 MIDI Keyboard
– Moog Sub 37 Bass Synth
– Dave Smith Prophet 9 Synth
– Pioneer XDJ-1000 (x2)
– Pioneer CDJ-1000 (x2)
– Pioneer DJM-750
– Shure SM-58 Performance Microphone
– Akai MPC-5000 Drum Machine
– Various Power Cables (Kettle leads etc)
– Socket Extention Bars (x4)
– Various Array of 1/4″ Jacks/Phono/2.5mm Jacks etc etc
– Tape
– Tables

Performance evaluation

I think that my performance could have been better. I think this because the volume levels of the channels were essentially randomized with no one to engineer the sound. This meant that whenever we’d play a new piece of equipment during the performance of our track, it would often come in way too loud or inaudible. We’d respond by turning our attention to the mixing desk to figure out what channel the problematic instrument’s signal was assigned to. This caused us to waste time diverting our attention away from playing the actual music, and also meant that the performance seemed unprofessional from the audience’s perspective. This issue could have been rectified if either we had a chance to balance the instrument’s sound levels beforehand and make notations of the actual desk fader levels so that we could set them properly prior to performance, or if someone was nominated to engineer the sound live for the performers as you would with an actual live band.

Also, the tables that the equipment was laid on had an awkward height, so I had to bend my knees, tilt my neck at almost 90 degrees, and stretch my arms to reach the equipment. This could become distracting and meant that I could not move to the music, which impaired my sense of rhythm/timing, resulting in almost-off-beat rhythms in the music.

On a positive note, our notations of equipment settings we liked meant that we could create and structure our tracks with ease.

Performance Video

Our performance started at 10:59 and ended at 26:00