Explorations through performances
The next chapter, ‘The Two Live Set Performances’, chronicles a pair of performances I held in the spring/early summer of 2023 as integral components of the Master Project documentation. Each performance gave me fresh insights for my ongoing research. My aim is not to give a full run-through of how to use Ableton Live for performance – or later how to DJ – but more specifically to give pointers that reflect on the hybrid performance.
The two live set performances:
My electronic music producer journey began to crystallise with my Bachelor’s project in 2018: “The development and performance of a 30-minute live set”. An invaluable lesson I learned from this experience was the realisation that there are numerous ways to craft a live set. Initially, I sought a singular tutorial, hoping for a step-by-step guide from an artist to reveal the exact process. However, I soon found out that every artist develops their own way, with no one method being better or worse than the other – you have to walk the path yourself. I started by trying out a set-up and using Ableton’s session view became intuitive. I produced my own sections of sounds and placed them accordingly in clips and scenes. I had some elements I played live and I sang – igniting the experimentation process.
Fast forward to early spring 2023, and the challenge reemerged in the form of “the development of a new 30-minute live-set” for a club night at Klubb Kosmos in Kristiansand, named “Vågsøg”. One thing I always found challenging with my live sets was that I never settled on one set, so therefore never became comfortable with playing the set. For each gig I had, I wanted to change it. However, as the way I set it up required a lot of rehearsal and was not open for much improvisation, I didn’t get much confidence. Even though I have a bachelor’s degree in vocals, this instrument is one I have a complicated relationship with. I love to express myself through singing, but the difference from being alone rehearsing in a studio, to performing on stage in front of an audience is immense. The throat tenses up, support disappears, and the nerves just take over. Having had a few bad experiences from when I did duo live sets singing out of pitch, I decided to look into what I could do to prevent this in my upcoming live sets. I discovered I needed to work on breathing techniques, meditations, physical exercise like running and cardio, daily vocal warm ups and exercises, and lastly to get enough time to rehearse the songs without making changes to the productions or the structure of the set.
For one month leading up to the performance for Klubb Kosmos, and continuing before the Master Concert, I did daily 10-minute breathing meditations. This routine aimed to strengthen my lungs and improve my mental health, and included other physical and vocal exercises.
Saturday, 29.04.2023
15 minute light stretch yoga
Breath out S-sound: 35 sec (out of breath)
Wim Hof Method, Breathing for Beginners 3 rounds slow pace, 11 min https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BNejY1e9ik&t=55s
Breath out S-sound: 50 seconds (out of breath)
Sunday, 30.04.2023
Shoulder rolls, light body warm up
Biking to the studio (with heavy equipment on my back)
Hum over gongs
Wim Hof Method, 11 min. Managed the non beginner one, but i got slight tinnitus symptoms at the end of the session so i have to take a step back and increase the exercise gradually. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tybOi4hjZFQ
Rehearsal with Lotta went well. Trying out live piano for Ocean Blue. Slight anxiety in the afternoon and some resistance to working. 17:30 trying again after a little rest. Feeling very nervous about the gigs.
Tuesday 08.06.23
vocal warm up, 10 min
acoustic rehearsal for Ocean Blue with Lotta
– break —
wim hof method, beginner, 11 min. Today was a lot easier. Felt quite grounded already. Only at the end of 1,5 minutes I felt a bit out of air, but managed to stay until the end.
Vocal training;
pentatonic agility https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pabIEGm1ihI
riffs and runs, 2 min
agility and speed, 5 min https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIRqYcDqTIU
Thursday 11.05.23
vocal warm up 10 min
rehearsal, run through x2 (each 30 min)
break
5 min full body cardio warm up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzqvM0BDUKU
Riffs and Runs, 5 minutes
hum and puffy cheeks, 2.5 min
Vårsøg - live set for Klubb Kosmos, 13.05.2023
For this performance, I prepared a 30-minute live set. This was the first time taking my ‘pop’-versioned live set to the stage – having transformed it into something that would work for a club night. My playtime was at midnight and the clubbers were therefore expecting music with a proper groove. Unlike a traditional concert, the shift into a club environment carried the added expectation of keeping the dancefloor energised. To achieve this, the 4/4 kick played a central role, complemented by a generous mix of percussion and subby bass. The venue had capacity for (max) 70 people on the dancefloor.
During the sound check, everything sounded great. The sound engineer and I also tried checking the levels quite high to simulate how loud it would be later at the club night. Because of all the people in the room, and the venue being rather small, the volume was much louder than we must have tried at sound check, because the moment I activated the microphone, it started to feedback. The sound engineer was not available at this moment so I had to improvise.
To work around the feedback issue, I first checked the “clean” vocal channel to see if I could have the vocals at a lower volume. The problem was that because I couldn't hear myself well enough in the monitors, I got nervous I would sing out of pitch. I didn’t trust my muscle memory to sing in pitch without hearing myself. Whenever I activated the vocal channel with the Tantra2 effect it made a very loud ‘brr-sound’, and I had to immediately deactivate it because it was so uncomfortable for the ears. I quickly decided on not singing after all. It was the first time I performed live without singing, and I was surprised to see that the set carried itself all the way through anyway. I had some vocal recordings on one of the tracks which people seemed to respond well to. I decided that for my next performance I should have stems of more vocal takes as back-up in case this would happen again. Another thing I took out of this performance was to do the sound check even louder than what I initially thought was loud.
As previously explained, the DJ's role of 'reading the crowd' differs for live sets, where reliance on a diverse music library is absent. Instead, you play your own productions, necessitating pre-arrangements with the booker to curate the live set for the specific time slot and venue. This consideration is also crucial for DJs, minimising the experience of playing music for a crowd wanting or expecting a different vibe.
When I did this live set for Klubb Kosmos, a woman came up to me while I was performing and made a song request. This is a common thing that can happen if people are not educated in “proper club culture” by respecting the work of the DJ. Getting requests can bring you out of the flow. For DJs who play with controllers like Serrato and are connected to wifi, they have the possibility to stream the request. This might be more common at commercial parties and therefore confuses people going to a more underground event, thinking they can do the same. Either way, this wasn’t a DJ set, it was live, so I was confused about getting a request as if I was a human Spotify list when I stood there with my keyboard, laptop, and all the lights shining from Ableton Push. I think there is something about the format of playing for people at night that makes them more unaware of their surroundings. That being said, it is common that some people ask for something else, which I doubt they would ever do at a concert. They also don’t look around to see that other people are actually enjoying the music that is being played.
Master Concert - 02.06.2023
After completing the live set at Klubb Kosmos, I expanded the set to 45 minutes, changing and adding new elements to the performance. My idea had been to gain confidence and control with the vocals by having an intro track that just consisted of piano and a backing track. The piano was played by a colleague, so I could focus on vocal delivery, technique, and performance. It also gave the start of the club set an intimate feel, and was something I got positive feedback on afterwards.
During the set up and sound check, I had technical problems with the sound card that needed to be solved. I had planned to have the outputs divided into:
KICK mono DI, 2 BASS mono DI, RACKS /L – DI Stereo L TRACKS /R DI Stereo R, VoxFX /L DI Stereo L, VoxFX /R DI Stereo L. Additionally, I intended to have the clean vocals sent directly to the in-house system via a return to Ableton, providing the flexibility to activate vocal effects whenever I wanted during the performance.
The problem was that my sound card didn’t manage to separate the outputs properly. We tried to troubleshoot, and after several failed attempts to download the software to my laptop because of low speed wifi connection, in the end the technical support installed a software which made me able to use the headphone output as an output. This was solved with just five minutes until the doors would open. I quickly checked the most important levels. When people started entering the room I was taken to one side of the stage. Understandably, I was shaken and nervous. I didn’t have the time to soundcheck much and hone the experience of my last gig – but luckily the sound engineer at this venue was professional and adjusted the levels during the gig without me having to worry about it.
When I walked out on stage I decided my only focus would be on vocal delivery, nothing else. Once I started to sing I could hear back in the monitors that it sounded good and I felt a rush of relief. My idea of this section giving me confidence if I managed to perform it well had worked. On the last song, “Wild Ones”, I decided to keep the pre-recorded vocals from the track because I wasn’t sure that I would deliver it perfectly vocally. The piece is one of two tracks that were created in a collaboration with producer Ingemann, where I am responsible for the vocal performance and production. The track was divided into stems with the categories: Bass, Kick, Drums, Pad, Synth and Vox.
To conclude this chapter, I want to highlight some feedback I received from my supervisors after the Master Concert. They told me that they heard elements of inspiration from Björk and the Roland D50 synthesiser. Interestingly, this had not been a direct influence on me, but after watching the documentary series “Ekstase”, where Bjork was portrayed as previously mentioned in the chapter “The Norwegian Rave scene”, I could recognise the reference. This revelation caught me by surprise, but in a positive way, prompting a moment of reflection and pause.
The hybrid performance
As I wrote in ‘The Two Live Set Performances’, there’s no singular correct method but rather countless possibilities to create a live set. Artists determine differently when approaching their sets based on what suits them best. I applied a similar perspective to my hybrid set.
Motivated by the creative experiences derived from individual live sets and DJ sets, I aimed to merge these two distinct methods. This endeavour culminated in a performance at Cornerteateret in Bergen on December 22, 2023, titled "Rehearsal with Friends." The term "rehearsal" emphasised that it wasn't a polished show but an invitation into my space of evolving ideas. The “with friends” part was crucial, as it still makes me nervous to present in front of people, even though they are my friends. This constellation allowed me to gain an "outside-in" perspective on my own practice — an opportunity to observe how my pre-performance thoughts correlated with my thoughts during and after the presentation.
In this chapter I will refer to the hybrid performance. You can find a video of it in the next chapter. My setup for the performance looked like this:
The CDJs are Pioneer 1000 mk2, right- and left deck.
The mixer is DJM-900nx2.
My notebook. I wrote down the structure of the set.
Ableton Push and Ableton Live.
Keyboard for key-mapping nudge (in front of the Push).
Arturia midi-keyboard for playing live bass and a sample pad.
Microphone directly connected to the mixer. Here I can add and use effects from the knobs on the bottom right of the mixer.
The “Clips Melody” is a guided meditation put in reverse to create an experimental sonic carpet. I have one “clean” and one with the plug-in effect “Little Alter Boy” from Soundtoys. I did this to add depth and low end to the audiofile. I used this for the final track of the performance together with the “sample pad”. The Sampler in Ableton is a built-in feature which makes it possible to turn audio files into a midi-instrument. This way, I can play different notes on the midi-keyboard, and it changes the pitch to the note I am playing.
The “Clips Perc” are two percussion loops. The Little Alter Boy was also added here for the same reasons as the “Clips Melody”.
The “Pads”, “Synth”, and “Vox” are the stems from the track “Wild Ones” – the same track I performed at my master concert. I decided to remove all the other stems (the kick, bass, and drums) and instead perform this as an “acapella piece” before bringing in a track from the DJ decks. I kept the pad, synth, and vocals and wanted to sing on top. I wanted the recorded vocals to work as a backdrop for my live vocals. This was done to create a denser sound. It was my first time singing this song without the rhythm section. This unsureness, at times, led to the timing of the phrasing being a bit uneven. I also kept the recorded vocals as a stem since I preempted myself getting nervous and wanted to set myself up for having a good start. In the future, I would love to do this confidently only with live vocals, or have the backing vocals lower in volume and practise the timing of the vocal lines.
When it was time for the second part of the verse, I played a midi-bass on the keyboard to give the vocals a more impactful effect. The issue that eventually occurred here was that I didn’t have “enough hands” to adjust the bass levels, sing, and get into the new track on the decks. I had made a second line of “scenes” in session view with just the pads from the track to give myself time to bring in the track from the decks. Here, I pressed a bit too early on the Push. A way to solve this in the future would be to automate the launching of scene 2, a possible feature in Ableton.
As stated in “Ableton Live”, DJ Gigola said it was in the transitions of the DJ set that she saw opportunities for music creation, even when playing other people’s tracks. Something I do a lot when creating transitions is based exactly on this concept – letting the two tracks overlap for a longer period to create a new sonic image. Then confidently swapping the low ends of the two tracks with each other on the mixer. If the beatmatch is a bit off, I adjust the jog-wheels to make them in sync. The tracklist of this hybrid performance was decided based on which tracks I found worked well together considering the key and flow. I made these decisions during the pre-production leading up to the performance. How the tracks fit together seamlessly is based on experiences I've gained over the last two years as a DJ.
As this hybrid set is intended for a club, there are longer sections where I let the tracks play without doing anything besides dancing and vibing to the music. The goal is for the audience to be dancing. Here, I refer to other chapters in this research project about creating a seamless set – having one track glide into the other without stopping the groove.
Towards the end of the hybrid performance (time code: 25:06), I start working more with the soundscape, fading down the percussion. What happens is a stronger shift of attention away from the groove towards the harmonies and sounds – an anticipation of what's to come. Where will I take it? I ended the performance here, but looking back, this could have been a great way to give space to “breathe” and refresh the ears before building the set up again, bringing the beat back in. In this section, the mix of the “clips melody” and “sampler pad” gave a linear soundscape to an otherwise percussive track.
I have moments where I am not doing anything with the knobs or with the live setup. If you close your eyes, you can hear things happening sonically. However, with eyes open, it can give the impression that I could do more. In these sections, it poses the questions: when I am dancing, where can I play around with more live elements? And where is it enough to just let the music speak for itself without intervening?
In one part of the hybrid performance (see from time code 11:25-11:32) I am doing a “call and response” with the vocals from the original track “Hay Consuelo” and singing in repeat what the vocalist sang before. This aspect of playing around with the raw material is something I want to explore more in the future. Maybe this can be an answer to something I can add while dancing?
Another part of the performance I want to highlight (time code: 18:15) is where I start beat-matching the “perc clips” in Ableton. I do this with the nudge function key-mapped to the external laptop keyboard. I work with the effects on the mixer to fade in the audio from Ableton. As you can see (time code 19:21), I was very pleased with myself when I managed the beat-match properly! The percussion element adds something to the groove from the decks.
The part that follows is a track where I’m singing. I wanted to try to improvise on top of the track. This improvisation had, in my subjective opinion, partial success. Since I’m searching for the note to sing, it comes off out of pitch in some places. Before, this would completely horrify me, but in this performance – and with looking back at the end result of the video – I can see that I am adjusting quickly and that the overall vocal performance and delivery is good enough. I still have to practise improvising in front of people, to get more comfortable and safe on stage. This challenge is something I am looking forward to.