The last year was pretty much dedicated to creating live sets. My girlfriend occupied the studio desk for home office, so I grabbed a few fun boxes and workes on live-sets which I recorded and filmed.
The concept is to have dj-style continuous mixing, no stems unless recorded within OT, just a stereo pair out to a potential PA. Gear varied, but was always centered around an OT MK2.
One thing you notice pretty fast is, that compared to DJ set’s, I have less tracks, but I can let the flow and evolve longer.
Chris Liebing for example plays around 15 to 20 tracks, my set’s consist of 10 to 12.
How many tracks do you prepare for a techno set? Do you even prepare full tracks or do you set everything up impro and jamming?
Totally depends on you really doesnt it? Theres no right or wrong way.
My last techno appearance I think I played 6 ‘tracks’ over an hour set. My stuff is all live OT and a synth. Surprising how much you can squeeze out of so little. I mean the first 15 minutes is an intro, same for the last 15 minutes, so really theres only half an hour to fill with banging…
I avoid comparing myself to others. I would recommend you do the same.
When I used to do more down tempo stuff, kind of semi DJing my own tunes I think I played about 12 in an hour?
Does it matter? I dont think so.
Edit. Also, it depends what time if night you’re playing. If I was doing a 3am set, Id probably just take my monotribe and do that for an hour… 2 patterns max…
I prepare full tracks, sometimes ranging over several patterns and I perform all the mutes, sweeps, fades, feedback swells and whatnot. It’s kinda like elaborately pressing play, but all these tracks came from well flowing jams, so it’s like I’m revisiting good times.
When the structure of the patterns allows it, I also try to have alternating patterns for high and low energy where I can choose which route to go, depending on the mood.
Like you said I also find the somewhat limited amount of space on the machines hard, but only when mixing two tracks like on a DJ mixer. Having these slow fades or two tracks running simultaneously is kinda hard to do, but kinda important for live mixes. You can’t have these jump cuts (?) for each and every transition. It always makes me wonder, is there another way for transitions? Either there’s a quick step from one track to the other, or a slow mixing.
Right now I’m approaching 45 to 60 minutes, depending on how long I linger on a track or a transition. There’s about 10 tracks, but about 4 are like alternate versions or extended transition tracks.
Yes, my thinking as well. Still working on ways to bring in single elements or change just one thing to introduce the next track and then building it up.
Stems would allow that, but then you’d have to scroll through a list. Live sampling seems to be a great way to do that.
Very true! The 10 tracks per hour don’t seem boring, so question is how much can you make out of them. Techno is very repetitive nature and I guess we all can appreciate an awesome groove for minutes without feeling bored.
The trick to live techno is dont do anything quickly.
Seems counter intuitive. But, as the dude up on the stage, its easy forget that the audience is in a totally different mental space. They might be digging the hell out of something in your music that you consider unimportant. So even subtle things like slowly fading out the hihat rather than muting it, makes a massive difference.
So really, building up a track and then coming back down (or blending something else in) takes a fair amount of time.
Sometimes it’s hard for me to control my anxiety and just stop tweaking for a moment to look at the audience, take a good breath, assess the situation (specially if I don’t have good monitoring, which I’ve realized makes me loose perspective and I end up rushing through my set - that’s why I mostly use in ear monitoring these days).
Also the reason why I’m always constantly trying to find the right balance for my live set - both technically and musically. As for now I’m trying to work with Digitakt and Octatrack only.
Going back to the OP, I agree it depends on many factors - style of music, audience, etc… But for me, if it’s techno, the less tracks I end up playing = the best gig outcome, and that’s because I probably didn’t rush it and - also important - I made transitions interesting, which is an art on itself, and when right they become tracks themselves, in a way.
If I had to say a bummer, it would probably be around 6-7 tracks in an hour. Again, there’s no recipe for this, just my personal experience.
I very much like your jams, Andreas! Was a big inspiration for me to make an end of summer live set.
I ended up 21 tracks / 90 mins, 124-132 bpm, MD+MM+DN+DD01, dj style transitions.
I pretty much try to make malleable patterns on my machines and when playing out I improv perform with them. Sometimes I’ll prepare for the set by grouping complimentary patterns near each other in the memory of whatever machines I’ll be using. It just makes sense to me and it keeps it fresh. I spend most of my set-prep time deciding which devices to use and making sure they’ll work properly.
On the other hand, I know tons of people who are the total opposite. They’ll program every last detail before hand and will know exactly how their set will go.
Both methods (and anywhere in between) are equally good. It’s just about finding what works for you. Unless you’re playing in a cover band there aren’t really rules to follow.
…prepare 50 strong, everevolving, constantly nailing the moment, crowd interactive minutes of controled freeflow…
perform realtime…
hit stop…
have one last thing prepared…
let them ask for it…
hit it…
say thanx…and leave…
Just before lockdown back in March, Napalm Death were generally playing about 23 songs in their set. To be fair, that probably equates to about 30 mins for them…
