Tonight i’ll take my two black elektrons to the nearest techno-bar for an 100% improvised show. I only have a bunch of one-shot-samples for drums.
Now i’m feeling a little nervous 'cause i read that many live-acts work with prepared sequences and audio-loops.
Are there any tipps that make an improvised techno show a bit more safe?
Something like: “Keep the flow, it’s better to make stupid noises instead of no sound”?
People won’t notice if you screw up, as long as the audio is still playing, especially if they are intoxicated.
Stay in control of the “energy level” of the set, keep things interesting with just enough variation, don’t overthink it.
It helps to have preprogrammed tracks and sequences, makes it easier, but luckily we can still do full impro thanks to the Elektron machines.
I do all improv sets. Doing one tonight opening for Richard Devine! My one true piece of advice is: “do whatever you want!” If you go up with no expectations and let the machines guide you, you will be fine. Don’t worry about what you think the audience is anticipating because the more you focus on trying to achieve a specific style, the harder it will be to achieve. Let everything come naturally from one minute to the next. Don’t fight the machines, because you will lose. When we play, we have our backs to the audience and we just jam and do whatever feels right. We don’t let anything aside from our gear dictate our actions. Just take everybody on YOUR adventure and let them into your world.
Best of luck, and please record the set so we can hear.
Don’t freak out if you mess up. As stated earlier, you will likely be the only person that notices.
I’m not so sure I understand how a fully improvized live set with Elektron gear works. Wouldn’t there be like REALLY awkward moments when you’re just trying to synthesize half-decent sounds? Unless you’re a sick jazz keyboardist, how do you come up with good melodies in real time?
If you play alone, how do you cope with the limitation of owning only 2 hands?
At least with my A4 skills it would be completely impossible to play that way. Even if I was a keyboard wizard, I’d STILL use pre-sequenced parts, as I even wizards have only 2 hands, and can’t play drums, bass,pads and lead at the same time, more complicated songs even less so.
Not dissing, just genuinely wondering, as about 95% of the time my A4 sounds unlistenable either due to me being in the middle of synthesis or not having found nice melodies yet. Listening to me doing improv would be torture, I truly raise my hat for anyone who can do it in front of an audience and not sound like complete ass.
To lighten up the thread, here’s what a good gig should be like:
First of all, sorry for my broad English, I’m French (nobody’s perfect).
I don’t completely agree with the point of view of Jaalmadakan and Ihatederekreed. Or maybe, I just agree with the idea that if the audience is fully intoxicated, you can do anything in any order and it will be OK. So, if you push this argumentation to its end, come to the club with a lot of pills, drop them in all the glasses, and wait for the people to be completely stoned to play any bullshit without any musical content 
But I think it would be very disappointing for you, first of all…
My opinion, based on years of lives acts in solo or with friends in free parties, is that improvisation is the most difficult thing to do if you are in front of a demanding and erudite audience, and most of the time, this is the case. I don’t want to put you under pressure for tonight, but most people will perceive the difference between a structured live act (even with a strong part of improvisation), and the guy who comes and discovers its machines during the live act and have no preparation at all. I think there is a minimum of preparation needed, in order to be able to “tell a story” with your music, and not only to play “techno”, “tribe”, or “dubstep”, or any of the classical musical genres you can imagine.
Hard work and strong preparation is, in my opinion, the only good condition to play good improvised music. When I play live, I always have sheets with notes that correspond to the progression of the musical ambience I want to develop, what breaks/drills/fills, etc., will fit with what pattern, what sample to use before and after what other sample (I often use samples of poetry, or political or surrealistic speeches, or theatre, etc.) in order to add sense to my music, and it’s like in jazz music: I’ve got a sort of written score (but without any musical note on it), and I do improvise a lot in the frame of this strong panel of constraint.
So, my advice is: like in BDSM, if you want pleasure, have pain first 
Have to agree with Barfunkel and Drone… I always practice and have material ready for a show and I have been doing this off and on for over 15 years… How many years have you been playing live?
How well do you know the promoter? If your improv train wrecks there won’t be much chance of the promoter asking you to do any future shows… Best to go into this with some material that is already programmed then go off on your improv…
Best of luck and bring a flashlight and spare cables…
I can see every bodies point against improv. It’s not for everybody, especially if you are worried about what people think. For me, I want to push boundaries and extend the line of experimental audio as far as I can. We don’t try to do any specific style of music, but rather try to explore the limitations of audio. In doing this, and in having this idea, we are very careful about who we perform for. We don’t play clubs. We don’t write dance music. We perform for experimentally open minded musicians who can grasp the idea of exploration. Obviously you have to know your audience. If you are going to play a club that expects to groove and dance all night, better off not going improv.
All that said, we practice 2-3 nights a week on honing in our machines. We try to understand ideas and logic of the machines, so that we can just get up and go. We don’t typically do synth patching live. I spend hours at home building my patch libraries on a4. Hours messing with specific samples on my ot to try to understand how they react to audio torture. Most importantly, for me, is that I’m confident in my abilities. I’ve been playing music for 20yrs in one way or another. Professionally for my early 20s. I’m not afraid to take chances and I’m ok with rejection. I’m not in this for fame or fortune. I just like making noises. As I’ve stated in other conversations, what we do is not always good, but we always have fun doing it. I spent years meticulously crafting guitar parts and rehearsing songs for months only to play the same set every night on tour for months on end. I’m over that.
My opinion, based on years of lives acts in solo or with friends in free parties, is that improvisation is the most difficult thing to do if you are in front of a demanding and erudite audience
Entièrement d’accord 
Every 5 minutes of my liveset took 3 or 4 hours of work to prepare… that takes a lot of hard work! I’d rather not improvise if I don’t have to and come up with a quality set that will please everyone… but if OP doesn’t have time to prepare… well good luck anyway!
AT IHDR… I totally see were you are coming from and you have valid points in regards to the style of music you are playing… The original poster sez he is playing a techno club so obviously people are wanting to dance and expect a DJ style format of music…
Going in blind and unprepared won’t cut it in my books or the people there expecting to shake their ass’s off but hey if he pulls it off then the man has some chops…
You should practice your ability to improvise, first.
That means you know very well - not to say “in deep” - your machines, your synths. That’s the first step; the technical one. The second step is the most important to me: you’re able to create/imagine the progression of the chords, of the melodies.
You should practice on Youtube. That’s a good start to know how able we are to improvise music.
It’s nevertheless better to have some prepared elements.
Anyway, I think it will be OK and you’ll have pleasure. Don’t forget to record your trip!
Psi, if your show is “100% improvised” then improvise. Simple as that. In doing live PAs for a while now, I found that if you are insecure about your set, you should definitely have markers along the way of your performance; be it a melody or pattern that you like, or just say that you’ll start your set off easy and ambiance, and then move into TD type sequencing territory, from there into some breaks. Fill up the outlines with improvisation. Along those lines. You will have to figure out what will work for you. Also, the more you understand the equipment you are using the easier it will be to improvise for you.
And yeah, IHDR and I played a ton of improvised sets this year. We did that to a (what I think) appreciative audience that understood what we were trying to accomplish. I doubt that our audience was a bunch of pill popping blokes, but never the less they appeared to have appreciated what we did. Those sets were improvised bar the occasional recall of a sound preset/sample that we crafted by hand in sessions prior.
100% improv may not work in a dance club setting, but then again it may.
Psi, how long have you been doing live PAs? It may be worth easing your way in.
Cheers,
c
An improv live set for your very one would be a bit stressful I’d imagine! I’m all for the idea, but if you’re not used to playing live, then the best advice I can give is to practice, practice, practice at home.
Even the best improv acts have segments that are generally a little bit planned out to some extent, if nothing else it makes for a good way to fall back if things start to get a little crazy.
good luck!
Maybe everybody here recalls the famous paradoxical injunction: “Be spontaneous!”. How to be “spontaneous” when you are urged to? No way, of course.
So, with improvisation, it’s nearly the same. To be able to improvise, in any type of music (harsh noise, electronic body music, trash sampler, or simple electro for the masses who want to shake their asses), you need a strong “culture” of all the possibilities offered by a musical language. To practice any of theses musical “languages”, you need the right “vocabulary”, the appropriate “syntax”, etc. To be able to say “I shit on musical norms of well taste”, you first need to have a conception, a knowledge, of what you want to shit on.
I’m also sure that what we call “improvisation” should be more conceptualized, if we want to share our experiences here. I mean (and I still fight with my poor level of English that makes me speak like a 6 years old child…), I mean that there is not, on one end, total improvisation that makes you free of any norms, and in the other end, not improvisation at all that makes you follow the path of mainstream music. For instance, it’s obvious that jazz (even free jazz) is a strongly improvised music, but it also depends on strong constraints, and on high level of musical norms. On the other end, classical music have never been the simple reproduction of a written score. A good classical musician must be able to transform the written score. Maybe it’s not what we call “improvisation”, but it’s not total following of the score either.
What I mean is this: forgive the illusion of being really able to do total improvisation as if it was a fight against total respect of the musical norms: this opposition is an illusion.
We can create the illusion of improvisation and freedom, but it’s a hard work, and sometimes a painful slavery to be “free”…
The word “improvisation” is such a trap, I think.
I do improv sets too but I have some help from the iPad when it comes to note entry and progressions. I use an app that helps me play in a certain key. The trickiest part for me is buildups and breakdowns. It’s often hard for only one person to simultaneously stop the snare rush, hi-pass and drop the drums back in. I do love plying in melodies I’ve never played before, but you better be good at that cuz sour notes will kill the mood.
That’s not to say I don’t plan out a ton before hand. Getting all the patches right, getting familiar with all the levels, and setting up all the unpopulated patterns on the boxes. It’s taken me months to get it right, but the musical freedom and freshness make it all worth it to me. Bye-bye other peoples records, bye-bye, boring laptop set, hello holy shit what am I gonna do next!
Thanks for all comments!
Sadly I had no chance to play yesterday, because there was a kind of regular’s table of 6 DJs at that club and everyone wanted to play his records. Nevertheless it was a nice party, the DJ’s were very kind guys and i had a lot of fun.
I know the word “improvisation” is a bit of a paradoxon by nature. Yes, music will never be free - even by breaking musical norms you accept them as norms.
My english is not good and a barrier, so today I did a little video which shows me doing that thing, what i ment with “improvising”.
First of all, stop apologizing for your English! You have a stellar vocabulary and strong grasp on grammar! If only 90% of native speakers could write English so well.
Anyway, I completely agree. Musical improvisation is based on thousands of hours of practice. “Solo improv” on an alto saxophone or a drum kit or a guitar is essentially chaining together and properly transitioning between segments of music the player has played hundreds or thousands of times. The skill that people either have or do not have (some practice can improve it but it’s mostly a subconscious impulse) is in getting from point “A” to point “B”- transitioning.
Fortunately, electronic synths and samplers and sequencers have the ability to save patches or projects or sequences tailor made to get a performer from point A to point B. My recordings are mostly put together this way: You simply pick groups of samples and sounds and sequences meant to go together, then you prepare and practice and save to memory transitional groups.
All DJs (most DJs) refer to a program called “Mixed in Key”. You don’t need it, but it is helpful to follow the rules laid out for moving from one key to the next- even within your own compositions. Like DJs, you plan a path for yourself and practice following it from start to finish.
The improvisation comes in as transitions become second nature, and then you learn the boundaries and how far you can stray from the path while still being able to get right back on it without dropping the beat or sounding off.
(this is just my opinion. I’m sure much more accomplished musicians are able to have much more freedom)
I have recently been experimenting with improv on the OT, an iphone, an ipad, and a blofeld. The best tip I can give you is to write down general moods/patches/samples that you want to convey and just let it guide you after that. Don’t go in without nothing, just a simple piece of paper will help you quite a bit as it did me. Basically my two sequencers are OT and Rebirth (sometimes) and I just go crazy on it. I love the 808/909 sounds on Rebirth for whatever reason so I’ve been using that for a while in my sets. The immediacy of having these two “drum machines” with the preloaded sounds that I know so well is awesome, and running into the OT I can manipulate the loops coming out of there extremely well, as well as being able to pan the machines completely and get two mono outs of it. So yeah if you have an iPad go for that.
Also Part Reload is your best friend. Scenes are cool and all, but they are really a preplanned affair for the really really good sounds. Experimenting with extreme sounds live isn’t bad and turning 4 knobs at once gets people hyped, and if your audience is into improv in the first place they’re gonna like it. Don’t feel like you have to talk down to your audience, many of them are fellow musicians in this kind of scene.
Good luck, and don’t stress it. If you practice and practice well, you’ll get good. Simple as that. There is no better indicator of success than dedication!
On a side note I don’t make exactly make dance music, more into expirimental stuff and with that sort of music there is more flexibility. I can play harsh noise for 20 seconds and it would sound amazing to me and people who like this sort of stuff, with dance music you’re more constrained to some genre conventions to make it appealing to actually dance.
I did an impro session yesterday on a birthday party and just wanted to share my experience:
First of all I had no time to look into the crowd, because reacting on the machine’s wishes (this is how i feel when i improvise) seemed to need my whole attention.
It was also very interesting to ask my listeners how it sounded. It appeared that some people thought that you normaly don’t need more than 10 to 15 seconds to create a new beat from scratch: They saw me half a year ago where i shuffled through some prepared loops with the octatrack, where they believed that i have created everything from scratch (during that 10 seconds that I needed to select another audio loop )
Finally it was endless fun! Everytime i released the tension and brought back the kickdrum to the floor the dancing people always screamed and that made me smile. Therefore i did that “create tension and release it”-game twice every five minutes
what ihatederekkreed said is the way to go and your know it aswell because you already decided to just rocking up with the foundation and JAM!
also you will get to know your samples like good friends and patches the same. it will make you very selective about what you consider quality elements because its on display now. you will be playing them like instruments. well done for getting out there as a proper live act not this bring my studio to the club bullcrap…
I did exactly what you told me.