So I am wanting to improve my performance ability on Elektron gear. I understand them very deeply, especially the ST, but I would like to do more “performance” with them. Currently most of my performance is just muting and unmuting tracks, and this doesn’t feel very interactive and visually it is very uninteresting. I am trying to think of things to practice to level up my capability on these machines. For instance on piano and other instruments you can start playing through things very slowly to get a feel for the movements before speeding it up. I am thinking mainly the DN DT and ST, but also thinking of techniques on the OT, though that will be harder to say since everyone uses it so differently.
Some inspirations for this type of performance are Ivar Tryti and Dataline, their performances are all so interactive with the machine. I am wondering if there are any concepts to help structure my playing to help accomplish this? Like one I have sort of figured out on my own is having a build up over four or eight bars, and then having it get simple again. There are just so many knobs that you can turn, and it feels impossible to know which ones to turn and exactly when to get the feeling you want. I wonder if y’all have any methods for trimming down those options to just what is most useful and practicing those?
One of the best electronic music live performances I’ve ever seen was an Ebbs and Flows set where he sat on the floor trying to make loads of connected synth boxes behave and they largely didn’t.
So I’d say make lots of mistakes and put yourself in tricky situations where you have to playfight the machine to get out. Making a mess and hitting reload if you can’t get back on the safe path yourself is a beautiful thing. Staying on the unsafe path while being mauled by beautiful electronic bears is even better.
Thanks for the mention! I made a little video for performance tips on the Digitone, if you’re interested. Haven’t gotten around to make one for the other instruments, but there’s a lot of overlap with the digitakt, I think!
I am not much of a performer (more just a tweaker, really) but I think the key is practice. @LyingDalai mentioned the main tool, reload. You could work with the obvious parameters that change things without messing them up too much: track level, filter cutoff, amp envelope, filter envelope and depth. If your core configuration has an LFO on some parameter, try tweaking its shape or rate. With practice you gain a sense of what things will sound like, roughly, so that you can choose sensibly on the fly.
I like reload, but the problem I have always had with it is that it sounds like I am building up to something, and then just going back to what was previously playing. I think I need to be more creative with the mutes to have more like three states to move between instead of two.
If I’m honest, I do not enjoy ctrl all. It’ll get things weird for sure but it very rarely gets things good in my experience. I’ve yet to do it at a gig because it usually just sounds kinda dumb and then boom, reload, and I’m back to where I was before I went to the dumbzone. Maybe I’m doing something wrong? I have yet to try @DaveMech’s technique of plocking the sounds I’d want to remain unaffected.
I have found I really liked Ctrl All on the model cycles with it’s limited parameter set that are all interrelated. Then all the sounds change, but in somewhat similar ways. Also having one single decay control meant that you could easily add intensity to all the tracks by increasing their decay. On Syntakt there are so many different envelopes and machines whose parameters don’t necessarily align to each other that ctrl all is less successful for me.
EDIT: I think what Annihilation above is saying is key, I feel very similar. There is this paradox where I want to be able to quickly and easily introduce variety and unexpected moments, but have it always sound good, which is inherently a contradiction.
You don’t have to reload; you could just leave what you changed where it is and change something else. Then when you reload down the line, the journey is more evident. Or you could back down more slowly to close to where you started, and then use reload to make sure, with the resulting smaller change probably not noticeable to anyone but you.
You can also reload sounds TRK+trig+no
Or individual pages parameter page+no
Control is really great imho.
Also having a second pattern that is “the drop” could help. Setting up pattern muted as well. So you don’t func no into what it was before but just kick + bass for example.
I’m a lot into performing by constantly changing parameters since I like my music to move and change and morph into other timbers or expressions – even if it’s just a bit here and there. I use Control All a lot both on Digitone and Machinedrum and find specific parameters that work well overall. I think there’s quite a number of parameters that can sound good and interesting changing with Ctrl All.
Also changing different parameters on just one track on DN is easy and works well. As Lying Dalai mentioned Reload always brings you back but if you change your entire pattern into something cool - copy it and you can then paste it at anytime as a variation. It can be subtle or drastic. Also the Track Reload on Digitone is gold if you want to change just some sounds back to the original.
I would recommend to systematically record your performances. I found it helpful to start with 30 minutes. Then listen carefully and take note of what works and what doesn’t.
Practice.
A lot.
After a while i learned how far i can take a parameter until it sounds “bad”.
And maybe ask yourself what part of your music really needs live tweaking. For example does it really sound good to you if the snare does some beat stuttering?
And do you want to tweak around because you feel you need to do something while performing or does it really add to the music?
You can tweak around like crazy but it can still sound like shit. So for me it’s all about getting to know how much or little tweaking specific sounds need to make it sound good to me.
There are a lot of tricks that people use on their machines that sound crazy but don’t sound musically good to me. Which is of course subjective. So it took me a bit to find out what i enjoy instead of using the techniques that a certain device or artist might be famous for.
@Dr.K, you really ought to bring those DT performance technique/philosophy videos in here. The ones from the improvised techno thread. I had plenty of performance experience before watching them and I still found them to be interesting and helpful. I’d have linked them myself but I’m pressed for time just now…
Here’s a link, there are others in the thread, look for them.
The most astonishing thing I remember from a @Dr.K techno video was their spending about fifteen seconds on the melody line. Twist the pitch knob at random while live recording, correct a few clunkers.
I guess part of my question is about the details of the practice. There is a good amount of “common knowledge” when it comes to practicing with traditional instruments, practicing scales, a common cannon of music, etc. In that case the practice is fairly straightforward. With these devices the practice routines are not obvious at all. So far I have just been messing with them and trying to make music with no real direction, which can be fun, but never results in a cohesive set of songs that could form a set, just a bunch of individual songs, all spaced months apart with no real commonality in sound.
I think I would question your view of the traditional route. I have been through about twenty years of weekly lessons on conventional instruments, spaced through my life, and of varying quality, some wretched, some okay, some good. I think it was only by watching my kids’ lessons and bringing to bear my own knowledge of the learning process as both a student and a teacher in higher education that I was able to make the latter half of that work effectively, and still that was in the service of playing pieces that were largely specified by sheet music, composed by others.
The analogy breaks down in several places. You are not recreating the songs of others, you are not playing them from scratch on something like an acoustic guitar with no presets. In your last post, you are hoping for something that falls more into the realm of composition, for which there is no simple practice technique. While an Elektron box can ease many of the burdens of composition, thanks to its memory and rigourous playback, that gap remains. What you can practice in something approaching a conventional manner are the instrumental aspects of the device, the key combinations, the sonic manipulation. But the higher-level structure will require some creative thought, and will not rely as much on rote repetition.
Just an example of what I mentioned earlier in this Digitone video. Some parameters don’t change the sound that much but it shows how much Control All you can do without getting too crazy if you have rehearsed it. I find the Harm parameter pretty efficient and safe to turn and shortening all envelopes can be fun and quite drastic.
