Re: [microsound] Performing "Live"

[ChaoShaman@xxxxxxx]

I haven't yet released any music or played a live set proper, but my 
2cents...  i see the computer as an amazing instrument.  pointing and 
clicking is NOT very musical, and is using whatever interface you have to 
digital audio(ie, software/DAW hardware setup), in the most innefficient 
manner.  Microsound, ambient, improv and experimental whatever, are to me 
about deconstructing the characteristics of sound and psychoacoustics, and 
listiners perceptions of music and time/space.  and as techie and a creator 
of some very glitchy, repetetive, nonlistenable garbage(and some beautiful 
synths and crunchy beats), i want to creat my own interface to an instrument 
of my design.  
    My own experience composing and creating thus far have just been 
experiments, and practicing techniques, and knowing and understanding 
different software intimatly.  Pointing and clicking and pressing play and 
passing it off for live is ok, but my goal or plan right now.  I like to get 
inside the programs or interface i am using and make it musical.  i used 
audiomulch, soundforge, and acid, learned how to quickly manouver the program 
and functions without relying on the slow mouse.  but the creation and 
compostion process is too long for my own technique, because a song my be 
mayde up of stuff from 2 or 3 diferent programs, and the refinement process 
sometimes too complicated or daunting,  now i have dicovered logic and 
reaktor on a FAST 8x8 i/o DAW PC.. and i'm abot to sell my soul to build my 
own machine...  1ghz athlon, p3 or p4?, 4 gig win drive, 2 9.8 GB scsi, flop, 
zip, cd, ext cdr, dunno which audio interface yet, maybe a motu.  basic midi 
keyboard or 2, a doepfer drehbank or similar knob box, and a peavy1600 or 
kenton control freak, (any suggestions are greatly welcomed offlist)  but 
anyways, with that, and logic and reaktor, i can set up nearly any kind of 
synth in reaktor, and control it through custom environments in logic,  
control the environment and important parameters of the individual 
instruments as well as the mixing parameters,  i can simplify most any 
process with enough thinking.   my main goaland teaching mechanism right now 
is building such environments that facilitate complete 
composing/sequencing/audio mixing flexibility, or can be playedas a live 
instrument demonstration or performance, that records as you play, allowing 
you to anaylze your performance in depth and resquence or fix it.  in this 
way, my music and some of my sound may be very static(and staticy)  but, my 
performance would be more as a window into myprocess, and works and ideas in 
progress. and the thought and ideas at the moment, putting emotion into the 
interpretation of the machine, process, and song at hand.

I am playing a set this month or next as part of a studentorganized 
electronicmusic evening at columbia college chicago.  I plan on playing with 
a few modified reaktor ensebles, and some sequenced tunes in logic, using a 
drum machine.

joe

In a message dated 3/9/01 4:22:41 PM Central Standard Time, david.t@xxxxxxxx 
writes:

<< > but then i look at a computer, and its like,
 > point-click-drag-boring.... its not musical. or rather, the computer is
 > musical, but _you_ aren't -- you can't play it as an instrument, you can
 > only tell it how to play itself.
 
 ... as when you pluck a guitar string, you are only "telling" the guitar
 how to play itself.
 
 we've been over this subject before.  computers are instruments too.  if
 you don't have the software to process your sound live (or if you find
 it a "boring" thing to do), then that's not the computer's fault. >>