The main voice in this says "since I started work, I must have lost a grand". This man was recorded on the 208 bus in South London and had plenty to say.
He had been going on about his life in the area. Clearly, he had been in trouble before, sleeping rough and taking drugs. I don't normally earwig in on people's conversations, but (and you can hear it in the track) he had a very penetrating voice and was sat right behind us upstairs. He pointed things out to his mate "I had a shag down there", and "I used to sleep in there, but they've tidied it up now. I woke up on fire once". He wasn't sure if it was falling asleep after doing a crack pipe that had caused the fire or whether his mates had set light to him. For the bit put into the track, he was going on about being ripped off by credit card companies. "Since I started work, I must have lost a grand".
The crowd voices were recorded at a protest march by the Congolese people in Whitehall, London. They were marching in protest of thier leader, I must admit I do not know much about Congo. The signs people held seemed to say that rape and murder were going on on a massive scale at the hands of their government. My son Dillon and I wandered into this march by chance. I recorded sound whilst Dillon took photographs. We got a lot of useful material. The march wasn't on the news that day.
Both of these samples seem to reflect our current troubled times. the man on the bus is one of the people that our idiot leader really wants to go away. But he won't will he? Boris (the mayor of London) promised to rid the streets of London of people sleeping rough by the end of this year. It transpires that the figures are rising instead. Cameron wants to take their benefits away. They juggle the figures. Putting graduates into Poundland stacking shelves for no extra money except for the benefits they recieve. Cuts to education and the health services. Times of austerity they say. Yet if you taxed the mega-rich 20% of their income for a year (don't worry, it won't hurt them) it could generate something like 80 billion pounds. So, no need for cuts then. It drives you round the bend..
Other sounds: There are shortwave clips and some synth loops built by Andi using Figure on the iPhone and some built by myself using Logic, and some synthetics made using a clip of white noise that has been sent through filtering and modulation effects. There is also a treated recording of a digger on a building site.
This track might be the last in the series of free ones we have dished out this year (it is the 8th). What we plan to do next is add one more to the collection and put it out on BandCamp as an album with some extra stuff (artwork and bonus tracks).
There is plenty more to come too.. This will be followed by a second album of new material and some tracks from the archives... we also still hope to perform some some live work. This time in front of an audience and with some visual things as well..
We had this rather ambitious idea of playing as much new stuff as possible. From an aesthetic point of view, this made a lot of sense; we had been so busy putting new jams together we had built up quite a backlog of material that was waiting to be edited and mixed. From a practical viewpoint however, it was not so good. We had decided to perform in a similar way to the last show (back in January) and do two forty minute sets using our laptops hooked up via Airport, running Ableton with a bit of DJ'ing inbetween. That meant editing and mixing an hour and twenty minutes of music beforehand to prepare the gig. A tall order given the amount of time we had before the performance.
We decided to go for it! It was up to me, really. I do the post-production side of things (with Andi's guidance/advice/complaining/swearing), and after a long period of contemplation I decided that it would be worth a go. We would do some recent tunes and twelve new ones. If I ran out of time we could always fall back on the previous gig's work.
It was incredibly complicated and hard work, but we got there. We also added in a re-work of a favourite track of ours from last year - "Oppressor" (from "You Need Glasses"). This was a good result as it originated from our earliest (maybe first?) jams using Ableton. Back then we decided to throw away everything after we had improvised with it. A kind of art-punk attitude which we later realised was a bit daft..
So, I got this huge project in place eventually and we jammed through a rehearsal session at Andi's the night beforehand. It was all looking good.
Two screen shots of the pre-gig arrangements in Ableton (click to see larger)
But! On the night we were all ready to go and things went pear-shaped. We had set up at Mr. Bloor's house in Deptford, South London. He DJs for NakedBeatz every other week (as DJ Simple). The NakedBeatz studio is somewhere else entirely, what happens is that the set is broadcast via a PC in Mr. Bloor's house, you switch over from the previous DJ (who could be anywhere in the world) when you go live.
When it came to the time for us to go live, Mr. Bloor pressed the button and the computer went "error". Bugger. Mr. Bloor frantically tried to sort the problem, but to no avail. Andi and I were sat there poised and ready to go for nearly an hour and a half before we finally went on the air. Even then it still wasn't working properly, so we have no idea what the poor listeners suffered (apologies if you were one of them).
All the technical hitches threw us somewhat and it was quite difficult to get into the right vibe, so we were not at our best. Still, the recording of it is not so bad..check it out and let us know what you think..
Rather than explain the tech bit this time, I thought I could run through where the sounds came from on each track.. you might find it interesting..
Set 1:
1: Steam
The set opens with a recording of a carrier bag. The bag features throughout the two sets. The bag was scrunched up, a microphone placed inside and the bag was recorded as it un-scrunched itself. The next sound to enter is a treated recording of me hitting jam pot lids with a butter knife. Other samples are of shortwave radio. Andi made the synth sound using Propellerheads"Figure" on his iPhone.
Box has been explained in a previous blog (see: here), so I won't go on about it here. This is a "re-dubbed" version. I like the acoustic sounding kit. Listen out for a recording of Andi tapping his feet at work and cutting strips of wire (reversed).
3: Oppressor
This was rebuilt from the original samples used for the version on "You Need Glasses". I added a synth bass to enhance the bassline that originally was generated by filtering one of the drum loops. The voices and other sounds and voices are all treated shortwave recordings.
Again, this one has been explained in a separate blog. The squeak was recorded in the local kids playground (the swings). The crowd sounds are a combination of a recording in a cafe and Andi walking around a building site, recording. The low pitched voices were recorded on the 208 bus in South London. The hiss noise is a waterfall and one of the synth sounds was generated from tape hiss. The main bass is a filtered section of the cafe recording.
5: Hobo
The bag and the jam pot lids return. Three bags this time, one heavily time-stretched. The bassline is a pitch-bending long 909 bass drum. Glitchy treated acoustic guitar. The synth sounds and one drum loop are again made by Andi using Figure on the iPhone. Plenty of easy to spot shortwave samples too, which is also where the chattering voices come from.
6: Crush Your Pride
This track is named after the shortwave sample present here, where there seems to be a translation going on of some Christian principles regarding "pride". There is a filtered Rhodes riff, sub bass and another synth and drum loop generated using Figure. A pad synth riff and drum parts were made in Logic. A sample of the Roland R8 drum machine and shortwave recordings.
7: Disgrace
The rather disturbing bassline for this was made by Andi using the Korg iMS20 on the iPad, as were the beeping sounds in the front half of the track. The voices are all recordings of shortwave radio.
The second beeping sample is overlapped from the next track (Flap Flops) and is a recording of the pelican crossing outside Waterloo Station.
8: Flap Flops
The recoding of the pelican crossing is melded with some shortwave radio beeping sounds. The snare-like sound here is actually a recording of someone throwing something large and metallic into a skip. There is a treated recording of the swimming pool at Bromley Leisure Centre and sounds from Wrotham Steam Fair last year. There are some treated Gamelan Gong sounds. The track ends with the sound of someone running to catch a train wearing flip-flops.
A pitch bend acoustic guitar and a familiar sonar sample begin this track. Then you have some shortwave mutterings with drum parts made using Ultrabeat in Logic. Another acoustic guitar completes this snippet.
A dirty feedback guitar that Andi calls "Simon May on the roof" begins this track. Most of the other parts of this track were built in Logic then trashed in Ableton. There is, as usual, shortwave lurking.
An accidental sample that I recorded on shortwave comes from Nicki Minaj's "Beez In The Trap" has been chopped and twisted. The other vaguely musical sound is some sort of eastern Zurna-like instrument I also picked up on the radio. I never found out what it was properly as I preferred not to tune it in correctly, keeping the barmy distortions. The low voice I call "the beast" comes from another snippet of shortwave, and there are other shortwave voices present too. All the drum parts were built by Andi using the Korg iMS20 on the iPad. The bass is made from a recording of the pier being deconstructed in Herne Bay, I think it is actually a motor boat engine in the distance.
4: Lost A Grand
The main voice in this says "since I started work, I must have lost a grand". This man was recorded on the 208 bus in South London and had plenty to say. At this time he was going on about being ripped off by credit card companies. The crowd voices were recorded at a protest march by the Congolese people in Whitehall, London. I recorded sound whilst my son Dillon took photographs. More shortwave and synth loops built by Andi using Figure and myself using Logic, and some synthetics made using white noise. There is also a treated recording of a digger on a building site.
Photo by Dillon Skyring-Birch
5: Bottle Banker
This was originally called "Dennis' Tune" because Andi's daughter's Guinea pig Dennis seemed to like it (hello Mr. Bloor, that info was for you). It begins with a recording made at the bottle bank in New Ash Green. The carrier bag and jam pot lids return again. There is the sound of a train door's 'closing' beep sound. Voices come from shortwave recordings and there is some reversed acoustic guitar. The disgusting bassline was made on the Korg iMS20 by Andi.
6: Auk
Most of the parts of this were built in Logic, synths with a real electric bass. The main synth is treated live in Ableton using the Saturator effect along with a filter that exaggerated and created harmonic vibrations. Shortwave effects and trashed drum parts complete the picture.
7: Stammerung
So named after mis-spelling "stammering" when identifying one of the shortwave voices here, it also seemed to fit with the German 'counting' voice. There are drum and synth loops made on the iMS20 alongside samples of the Roland R8 drum machine, synth loops made in Logic and a real bass guitar. Some sounds are made from a recording of strings on a piano being plucked that I made at Nicky's house in Salisbury, which have then been effected by Andi.
8: Gannett
Synthetic double bass and piano parts recorded in Logic and then trashed in Ableton, with some random acoustic guitar harmonics shimmering. Shortwave lurks as usual, this time heavily gated and chopped up.
Simon. Note: to see more of Dillon's photography go to:
Note 2: The tracks listed here that have clickable links as their titles: clicking the link will take you to the SoundCloud page that has a free downloadable version of the track
On the tech side, this was all put together using pretty much the same methods as the previous gig back in January (see: Our live gig, tech details & stuff), only without so many mistakes. I have since learnt to always use WAV (or AIFF) files with Ableton as the program reads and understands them better. If you use mp3s the program simply converts them and stores WAV versions it creates in its "Decoding Cache" folder. This folder can get pretty massive quite quickly if you are not careful. Use WAVs and there is nothing in it at all (besides the ever present "cache content" file).
We are doing a live performance on NakedBeatz this Thursday June 7th from 8pm-10pm (GMT) on DJ Simple's show.
It will be a similar arrangement to the one we did back in January. We will play two 40-45 minute live performances with DJing inbetween.
We have just about finished the preparations for it apart from a final rehearsal tomorrow. The performances will feature all new material, 16 tunes, 12 of which have never been heard before. It has been a lot of work, and we are pleased with it, so we very much hope you will be able to join us.
NakedBeatz is a digital radio site, and you can download an app from the site if you want to listen on a smartphone, or you can just play it on your computer. You can also text us live on the night via the site, and with any luck there will be a live video feed. We hope to provide you with a lovely slide show (a bit of improvement was needed after last time!)
Sounds recorded in a cafe mixed with a walk around a building site. There is a delightful squeak from some swings in the local park. Vocals curtesy of the passengers of the 208 bus in South London and a waterfall. The bassline riff was added afterwards but is made from the same cafe recording.
When it is all put together it sounds to me like Satan stuffing fat tourists into a steaming mechanical vat of junkies. All done to a groove of course..
This is one of about 10-15 previously unheard tunes we will be playing (and altering) live on http://nakedbeatz.com on June 7 (8pm-10pm).
"Tang" is the result of a jam we had that was based around a couple of groups of sounds. The first group was a collection of loops made in Logic. These are the drum patterns, the distant reverberating synth, the twisting arpeggio pattern and a stabbing synth riff. The second group are a collection of shortwave samples recorded on the 1980s charity shop radio we acquired and some feedback guitar.
We began preparations for the jam (as we do most times) by "breaking" all of our sound samples using the various effects processing options in Ableton. We do this on our laptops at the same time as each other, which enables us to merge and knit the sounds together. Sometimes sounds get re-tuned or time-stretched in order to work well together.
In this tune, I felt that the feedback and shortwave melded particularly well, at times almost becoming one sound.
Once all the sounds are sufficiently broken, and we both feel we have enough material to work with for an improvisation, we jam it.
What you hear is a practically unedited version of the jam. I only chopped some of the beginning off. Once the jam was recorded the next step is the mixdown. What I do is to merge Andi's saved arrangement and mine together one one computer. Levels need to be adjusted, and in this process often new elements are revealed. This is partly because of the better monitoring conditions and partly because the dynamics are improved or I will alter the tone to create more space in the sonic landscape to assist clarity.
However, in X-Amount, we are often dealing with noise. Shortwave and feedback are prime examples, and what will happen in the process of creating "space" is that the noise elements become textures that sometimes will drift in the background, or sometimes will totally dominate and pollute this sonic landscape.
As I put the mix for "Tang" together I felt it needed some new parts. I added a sub bass pattern to give weight, and a snare beat (slightly "broken") and a white noise "cymbal" to help the rhythmic parts which were getting swallowed a little.
That was it, except for a couple of tweaks in the automation which I tried to make sound as human as possible, a bit like a hand slipping on the mixing desk. I used to believe in a clinical robotic perfection, maybe because my early years in mixing and recording during the late 1980s were highly inspired and influenced by the beautiful electronic productions of bands like Yello, Prince, Scritti Pollitti and the introduction of digital audio. Now, for me, perfection is built around the beauty of human error and decay and breakup in sound.
This new track "Transparency" comes from a recent laptop jam we had at Andi's place. The week before I had been in Herne Bay, Kent and along with taking photographs for a new project that I am working on, I did some field recordings. The bassline from this track was made from a recording made a distance from Herne Bay pier, which they are in the process of dismantling. We filtered out the top frequencies, which left this fantastic low rumble, which must have been the sound of the power tools they were using. On playback, I thought it must have been a motor boat, but I don't remember seeing any about that day.
Herne Bay pier (with workers)
Andi created all the drum sounds on the iPad using the Korg iMS20. The rest of the sounds are treated versions of recordings made of shortwave radio from this Phillips thing I found in a charity shop recently. I got it because it has two bands of shortwave. It just about works, you can only record off of one channel, and sometimes the interference is ugly (and that is going some by our standards!).
The Phillips D 8523 "Power Play Machine" with spatial stereo
In recording I picked up all sorts of fantastic distortions. I was searching for voices and noise mainly, but suddenly these two melodic sounds leapt out. One was some kind of eastern instrument, I never got to hear it clearly, and so it remains pretty much unrecognisable, but you can hear these manic notes running about like some crazed lead guitarist. The other melody was a distorted voice. And, yesterday, while I was putting the edit and mix together the lyrics began to seep through and I eventually identified it as "Beez In The Trap" by Nicky Minaj and some pillock called "2 Chainz" who goes on about how he has "a private home started from the public houses", how on earth does that work? And I am no where near hip enough to know what "f*ckers on your biscuit" means.. nothing to do with custard creams I am guessing. Its a fairly unexciting rap track to us, but there is something interesting about the minimal production on it and the melody in her voice. It gets a whole lot better when distorted to near oblivion.
The original lyrics of the song go:
"Bitches ain't sh*t and they ain't say nothing
A hundred motherf*ckers can't tell me nothing
Beez in the trap, bee beez in the trap
Beez in the trap, bee beez in the trap"
Through some distortion, chopping and looping it ended up sounding like "a hundred days straight and they ain't saying nothing" which made me think about David Cameron's empty blah about so-called 'transparency', hence the title of our track. I can quote Cameron on transparency here: "Information is power. It lets people hold the powerful to account, giving them the tools they need to take on politicians and bureaucrats. It gives people new choices and chances, allowing them to make informed judgments about their future". Well, he knows that all too well doesn't he? I just get the feeling his so-called transparency is no such thing. You wonder how much they are hiding. He may reveal his tax figures but I bet that doesn't tell the whole story, for example if we dig a little deeper we find them accepting donations in return for changes in policy (see: the Cruddas resignation), and there is bound to be more that we are yet to find out. Cameron's "transparency" is a smoke screen.
Anyway, stopping myself from going off on one, we hope you enjoy this track, its a bit of a frenzy. It's the sixth in a series of free tracks for 2012. We have loads more waiting for mixdown. We will get them out here soon. There are plans for live gigs and more jams on the radio too, plus some multimedia activity and some remastered and unreleased tracks from the past, we will keep you informed of course.
"Box" is basically an edit of a laptop jam we had recently, but with additions, subtractions and a few enhancements. Initially, we were very pleased with the playback of the reference recording we had of the jam (we always record what we do live to a Zoom H2), but once it was edited down from its original ten minute form, it lost something. It wasn't that I had cut out all the good bits, and it wasn't the fact that it was shorter, it was something else.. I suppose, months ago we would have been happy to put the original edit out, but now I felt we needed to try to push the boat out a little more.
In a sense, we have been doing that anyway. There are a good few sessions that have not been mixed yet, and some of these have a quite new vibe to them. I set to work on "Box" initially to try and put a bit of the 'funk' back that I felt had been lost from the initial loops in the jam. Once we had thrown a load of other loops at the new ones we had ended up with a very bass-laden thing (it still is a bit), and it seemed to me that there was a lot in there that was not getting heard.
So, I returned to the Ableton files and began to re-build the track. Once I did this I discovered plenty of errors that, once corrected, added a lot more to the mix. To bring back the 'funk' I separated some of the conflicting elements and added some new drum parts to emphasise the bass rhythms. Doing these two things then gave me enough to be able to re-edit it. So, I set about cutting parts out. Once this was completed, it was just a matter of re-balancing the levels and I was done.
I have made it sound like this was a quick and easy job, but it was in fact complex, and was constructed (on and off) over three or four days. When you are working intensely on something I find it important to walk away from it every so often, otherwise it is easy to lose sight of the effect that you will have on your audience and what the thing is that you are actually trying to do in the first place.
The sounds within "Box" are a recording of Andi cutting wire (which sounded to me like he was cutting the feet off sparrows in the woods), some leg slapping and various electronic distortions with a hint of shortwave.
We have ended up with a better version for your listening ears. Another free download (5th in a series of free tracls for 2012). We hope that you enjoy it..
The fourth in a series of single track, free download releases for 2012. "Wire Frame Ghost" is an edit from a recent laptop jam at Andi's place. It is virtually unchanged from the original jam, we only shortened the beginning a little.
It is a more mellow track than some of our other recent efforts, and we hope that you enjoy this slightly different vibe. It begins with our typical sounds.. shortwave radio, sonar, and piano strings being plucked. Other sounds join; filtered white noise and tape hiss, backwards acoustic guitar harmonics, plus new sounds created with digital synths in Logic and patterns Andi generated using the Korg iMS20 on the iPad. Check the Korg out here. Its an amazing piece of kit.
The title "Wire Frame Ghost" seemed to fit the vibe generated from metal strings and electronic interference. Artwork is again by Andi.
New ones for Feb 2012. The second in a series of one track releases. "He Was A Chef, He Was" is initially an edit of a laptop jam we had. The "Bubble & Squeak" remix was done in Logic Express. Both are free to download. Enjoy, and as Andi says "hope it doesn't make your ears bleed too much".
When presented with the opportunity to fill a two hour slot on the radio, we thought it would be a straight-forward task in terms of setting it up and performing, and to a certain extent it was.
We had not done an entirely digital gig since the early 1990s, and back then we did it using 2 Alesis MMT8 sequencers, the Roland R8 drum machine and a Roland D110 synth plus some effects. This was entirely different.
The Alesis MMT-8 Sequencer
I came up with five alternative methods of working with Ableton Live that we could use for the show, some were more complex and demanding, and some were basic and simple. We decided that simplicity should be at the core of the performance along with the ability to improvise, so our final choice of performance method lay somewhere in the middle.
We decided on two 40 minute sets (the rest of the available time on the show would be filled with DJing). The sets would be a selection of our best tracks along with some new material. Each set would be constructed in such a way that we would be able to manipulate the tracks as they played. Both of us would be able to add dubs to the channels we controlled and we would also be able to mute or delete things, and/or add new parts and sounds on the fly. This would give the set the live feel that we felt was essential and would provide a decent representation of the way that we create and improvise.
The way it would run would be very similar to the way that we generate new jams, with two laptops running Ableton hooked up wirelessly using the Mac's Airport ethernet connectivity. The analogue outputs from each Mac could then be sent to a mixing desk and then on to the computer running the radio station software.
All I needed to do to prepare things was take the Ableton project files from each track's final mix and divide it up into two, one for Andi and one for myself. Simple.
Not! Once I started this process it got instantly more complex. Once we had agreed upon the two set lists I decided to build each set by starting with the introduction and adding each song one by one. It soon became evident that things would not work out as simply as we had hoped. Each song had a unique build, which meant that there were few common elements across each set, so how to link the songs together for performance?
I decided that I should be thinking as though I were working with a live band at a live venue. I needed similar restrictions instead of the infinite possibilities of the digital realm. Often, when doing front-of-house engineering for live bands you have to compromise to meet the technical restrictions of the venue. There are only so many channels on a mixing desk, and only so much outboard equipment.
In our digital set-up, we have a huge amount of channels available (more than any hardware mixing desk), but to have every single one of the instruments, loops and samples that we used in each song on its own unique channel with its own unique processing would create a vast and unmanageable project. So, the idea of working more like a live band arose to simplify things and create a project we could realistically operate live.
I built a channel list, much like one that would be derived at a live venue, with a drum kit broken down into its separate elements (bass drum, snare, hat, toms, cymbals; the only difference with us is that we often use two or three bass drums, two snares and two hats, no toms and plenty of percussion), bass, guitar, synths and so on. Then there were channels for samples, field recordings and loops. Instruments and sounds would be put into the channel that nearest suited them.
For the live performance we would be working with the Korg NanoKontrol units again, so it made sense to try and build the two sets with around 8 channels for each of us, then we would have a direct correlation with the software and hardware, as well as keeping things relatively simple. The last thing you want at a gig is to have hundreds of settings and parameters to remember. Too many and things will definitely go wrong at some point.
Simon's Arrangement page 1: (click to see larger)
Another issue was that Andi works with Ableton using a completely different method to me. I tend to line up a series of tracks (say, bass, drums, synth) left to right across the screen and process each channel with effects independently. Andi tends to pile up samples in one channel and send them through effects, then another group in another channel, so that different sounds get processed dependent on which track he hurls them at. We both use effects on the returns too (usually an echo and a reverb).
When I divided the sets into two (one for each of us) the two different working methods meant that I had a lot more channels than Andi, and Andi's effects could not be loaded in the same way for the set as he had for each song. The same was true for a lot of my channels. This is where the compromise began.
Andi's Arrange page 1: (click to see larger)
For each track of each song I decided what its essential "movement" might be for the live aspect of the gig. What I mean here is that I might choose a filter's frequency parameter as the one that would be manipulated live across that channel for that song (and possibly for the duration of the set). There would be far too many to cope with otherwise. So, after that decision was made for each channel on each song, I would then export each track (or parts of it) as an audio file (with the other non-live effects included), then import that file back into Ableton and add the "live" effect to it's own channel. One or two effects were automated so that they would switch themselves on and off at the right time for specific tasks in a track, but nearly all of the essential (and most audible) effects were operated live.
FX notes
After a while of building the sets in this way a pattern began to emerge which enabled me to make a decision as to which effects would suit each channel for the entire set. I set up Andi's channels in a similar way, but left him to make his own decisions regarding effects choices.
Doing things this way also helped to reduce the load on each laptop's CPU during the performance, which was also an important aspect for us (my laptop is an aging Mac PPC iBook G4). The downside of this was that each song generated quite a number of these audio files, and very soon I began to realise I was eating hard drive space at an alarming rate, so each file was painstakingly converted to mp3.
Ableton Export: note Analysis button
If you decide to work this way, I can offer you an important tip here. Ableton likes small bits of audio (i.e. loops), but does not cope so well with large audio files, so when you export files for re-importing make sure that you export them with an "analysis" file too, because (as I found out to my cost) if you import a long audio file into your tune without the analysis file Ableton will make a stab at getting it in time with your song, but it will most likely make mistakes. What happens is that you get sections of your file unexpectedly time-stretched. Sometimes this can sound good (and I did leave one or two in, check out Brian's voice in "Brian"), but mostly it just sounds wrong. You can end up with large sections of your tracks being way out of time. If the analysis file is there, this problem does not arise.
After all the new files were in place, I then used the "crop" facility to get rid of any silent space on the audio files to further save hard drive space (or so I thought) and to help our ability to "read" the arrangement as it progressed through the set. We would be able to see where parts dropped in an out of the tunes.
The trouble with the hard drive space-saving idea was that although Ableton does get rid of the silent sections, it does it by creating a new WAV file. Arg! It did not know this until I began this method, so all the painstaking mp3 conversions were a complete waste of time!
Eventually I had it all sorted. A Live set each for both performances. I had overlapped each song and created a tempo map so that as we went from song to song it would sound like it was being mixed like a DJ, but (different to DJ mixing) we could overlap a channel at a time (i.e. decide to have the bass part enter before anything else if we wanted, then a synth and so on) which meant far more creativity in the mix. We could improvise all the way through by using mute controls to silence parts (and enhance others) and use effects to twist and mutate things on the fly. Andi even decided to drop in loops as we played.
We did two rehearsals before the radio gig itself, and things went fine. The idea had worked. The computers coped fairly well, except for at one point losing time with each other (this led me to think that I should not totally trust Airport for sync purposes, it's reliability seems to change depending on where you are working. Connecting using an ethernet cable is probably safer).
We both set up our NanoKontrollers to do things the way we wanted. The faders and knobs controlled effects parameters, buttons controlled effects on and off and channel mutes. If we needed to operate other controls we just went for the trackpad on our laptops. I covered my controller in stickers so I could remember what did what.
NanoKontrol: stickered
I had decided to steer away from any live level alterations. This is where there is a real difference to a live gig. In the gig situation what you here from the PA system is what most of your audience is hearing, so you can make alterations with confidence. In our situation you are closer to mixing in the recording studio. Your audience will be listening on their own speakers or headphones wherever they are, so your mix levels have to be as near to perfect as you can get. I balanced all the levels on my studio monitors as best as I could beforehand, knowing that there would be some shift because of the live treatments we would apply, but hoping to contain any wild leaps in volume (that might be a caused by improvisation and effects) with limiting and compression set in strategic places. I did at times alter levels in the mix, but I knew this should be done with extreme caution, especially as we would be performing on monitors we had not heard before, so it would be impossible to judge frequencies (and therefore levels) correctly. We had to trust the monitor mix I had set up previously on the studio monitors I knew.
In the end it worked as well as we could have hoped for. It definitely felt like a true live performance, and technically there were no major faults. We had great fun. Cash and the children were filming with video cameras and moving lights about, David and Fred Aylwood turned up (old friends from the 1990s - David was in Baby Trio and used to play percussion sometimes with Best Foot Forward, now plays in "Blurt"; Fred performed as "Les" in Vic Reeves' Big Night Out) and gave us a positive boost.
It turned out that there was a web cam there when we performed, so our audience got a slow lo-res view of us doing our thing. Not much to see though, two blokes twiddling knobs is not the greatest visual entertainment. We wrote things on bits of paper and held them up to try and liven it up a bit, but in future we must improve that side. Really we were too busy doing our musical thing, we need others to help with the visuals. We have been preparing some video, and hopefully we will have some VJ activity for the future. Any offers of help would be most welcome, so please drop us a line if you are interested or know someone who is.
The weirdest part was the silence afterwards. Normally when you do a live performance you get audience feedback. This was very different. There were one or two positive comments that came through on the live text thing on the radio station, and both of us received a couple of texts to our mobiles, but that was it. Silence. We have no real idea of how it all went down, or even if many people tuned in. Very strange. We felt it went well, and I suppose we have to cling to that.
We had ideas for the DJ side too. Originally we were going to play all home-made stuff, some of it going back some time, but I did not have the time to prepare alongside preparing everything else.
Another idea was to play music that reflected our influences or related to what we did as X-Amount somehow. We also needed to please the show's regular listeners, so another compromise was met. I played some recent electronic stuff, one home-made ("Spdaz", one of the Dazman's creations on the "Nicky's House" album of 2010) and some older tunes. "Rema Rema", one of Andi's favourites from the post-punk early 1980's. "Rema Rema" was put together by and featured Marco Pirroni, who went on to form Adam and the Ants. The Pop Group's "Thief Of Fire" from the brilliant "Y" album.
Mark Stewart
Andi and I are both long-time fans of Mark Stewart's work, you can see the influence of mad dub too (done here by genius Dennis Bovell). Can's "Vitamin C". Andi played me this and I have been hooked ever since, thanks to him and the Dazman. The first track in the mix is Four Tet's remix of Rocketnumbernine, and I discovered this through seeing this uplifting video:
With that, I leave you until next time. Many thanks for reading, I hope this was of some interest or use. Please e-mail us or leave a comment (you can do this anonymously if you prefer). We would appreciate some feedback. Many thanks Simon x
