The improvised techno thread

Totally agree with you—I posted an improvisational performance and got the same response.

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You are right, a lot of it is semantics and largely pointless. They all come with something prepared (we don’t want the goat herder joke to make an appearance here). But I do see Surgeon, Karenn, Speedy J actually making a pattern on the fly, sometimes a sound too. For example, Surgeon makes a sound on the Leploop and then uses sample and hold to create a pattern. Blawan and Pariah clearly make some patterns on the fly. Speedy J creates everything on the spot. It doesn’t matter, but I am interested in the improvisational aspect of it.

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So if I just pressed play, nothing would happen. That’s why I don’t understand the question. I would understand if you had no experience at all with music production and improvising. Besides, there are so many different ways of improvising. I have also improvised for 2 hours on just one pattern and always created something new live. That is definitely improvising. Everyone plays a sequencer or runs a pattern. Strictly speaking, we should then play each element individually and also the drums, so reasons directly a band.

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Again, I was interested! Do I need to add lots of smily emojis so I don’t upset anyone? :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

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Great. Then share your knowledge and have a chat about it. You’ve posted 160 odd times and more than half are links to your music. Sometimes people just want to talk about gear/music/workflow/technique. If they didn’t then this forum wouldn’t exist and you’d be stuck to using YouTube/souncloud etc.

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All good! I was more tickled than anything. Improv police…”yes, and” this man!

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Perhaps as a final post I should add that I suck at improvising. My dream is to be able to jam out for an hour with very little prepared beforehand. Hence, I ask questions. Enjoy your weekend folks.

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Drums sound similar for the vibe but here even melodies are shifted live to create variety. What else do you want as proof? :smiley: :slight_smile: come on

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You are right!

that part I do agree with because it is also in the premises of the thread:

no need to be offended for anyone really, this is THE place to ask stuff about how to approach live techno, again, in my books improvisation can vary from either creating a sound on the fly or playing a pattern in a way that can’t be replicated again, if you listen to Lady Starlight talking in one of the interviews she talks about how all of her studio tracks are basically a practice for live performance, and she talks about how some parts can’t be replicated again.

I think that you can’t play same pattern exactly the same two times (I know I can’t :D), you’d need to be an actual robot to turn every knob the same way twice over time… so that’s why I think doesn’t matter the pattern is prepared, it’s how you play it in a single run…

who’s dream isn’t exactly this, but how do you get there without playing your patterns? there’s so much improvisation room with a single pattern, you can give me Mutlu’s pattern and I guarantee it will sound crap if I play it lmao, call it performance, call it improvising, if someone turns on a machine and plays something while constantly changing stuff - it’s live techno and it’s always improvised to a certain degree, you can sure feel that you’re looking for a deeper level of improvisation but it is improvised, as every turn of a knob, every track mute, everything done by a feeling of the music in the heat of the moment, and the fact that it sounds like a “dancefloor ready track” means that the performance (and the improvisation :wink: ) was on point!

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I work differently with the modular system. I only prepare drum sounds and a few patterns. The melody is generated by a Turing machine, I determine the rhythm myself and create new sounds with the oscillators. I could easily improvise for 4 hours. If I don’t improvise, nobody else will either. I don’t understand what’s different about me and what’s not right? It doesn’t make sense, that’s why I was wondering about the quick answers about „thats Not improvising“.

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Art, music, improvising is not just a and b. There are several ways. Sometimes it doesn’t suit the music to have a keyboard standing there and play wild solos. I can do it, but I don’t have to do it every time. I had to learn techno music differently anyway. It’s so unmusical and very based on rhythm and minimalism. It’s its own art form. Maybe it looks simple but it’s not really. I love it.

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That’s not an improvisation by any definition.

Just unmuting tracks of prepared patterns is not really in the spirit of the thread as I see it. I’d hope for more … but each to their own.

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You make patterns. You improvise

Some interesting discussions and opinions here around the definition of improvisation. Certainly had similar differences happen from being around the improv scene in London that funnily enough can often sound the same kinda sound each time, often seemingly a genre as well as an approach. The differences i feel can become further separated, when comparing say techno type styles with more traditional improv, and i suspect often it’s due to a level of ignorance (and I don’t mean that in a nasty way) around the cues and techniques found in each style.

Anyway, my reason for posting was based off a comment above and someone mentioning the creation of sounds as part of improvisation, which i think is interesting, that perhaps when done well, is not as easily believed and assumed some prep must have happened, which of course happens even in improv music. How much and when and all the details, gets nuanced and difficult to get to without understanding each person’s process. Also skill of the improvisers, some might start off adjusting a small thing, which compared to someone more experienced or perhaps prepared to risk, seems less improvised. But then we could call that a better performance from the improviser.

You always get performance regardless if it’s improvised or not. How you perform is where improvisation sits.

I think i might create an improvisation from scratch video, making something from a default starting point, and seeing how this compares. How quickly to get sounds into a place that work together. I generally do this anyway, a jam at the start of a video, chat a bit, and a different jam at then end. But maybe a different frame of mind, will yield a different output. Also it would be kinda interesting that the free project download is only the starting point, a setup, to then take in any direction. I think it’s ok to prepare some sounds, as in improv the performer will have a table full of options, and if you see them perform multiple times, you start to see themes and a repertoire that is pulled from, which you could argue is their style.

The definition game gets a little pointless if trying to pin it down, as it assumes it must be. Sometimes things aren’t like that, they are more fluid.

Anyway, my thoughts :black_heart:

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A 2-hour set is best. 5 minutes is easy

that’s what’s happening in Mutlu’s videos from my pov.

he makes a pattern, he improvises while playing the pattern, that includes sound manipulation on the fly including muting/unmuting sounds…
you can see him operating the machine, how is this not improvisation?
every decision he makes is hardly pre-planned, you have a rough idea what’s in the pattern and you try to combine the sounds into a recording or a performance, it’s not like it’s all sequenced to the point where he pushes PLAY and it all plays like a pre-recorded material…

I do understand all of the points made against this of course, as in “I want to hear people coming to a blank pattern/kit and build something from nothing”, but I don’t think it must be THAT pure to be considered improvised, when you have the origin sound in your hands and you tweak that filter - you’re improvising, when you decide how much you want to send something to the reverb - you’re improvising, when you decide to go and play with the delay/reverb real time - it’s improvising.

that’s at least my opinion…

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Some tracks are 100% improvised and some are 50% or 25% improvised. Is there a difference? Yes. Does it matter? Not to me. It’s all music.

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Musical improvisation is a spectrum of possibilities, and everyone has their own preferences or boundaries with it. Personally right now I’m particularly interested in music that starts from scratch without any real composition beforehand, or close to it with perhaps an initial set of raw sounds/patching. That approach seems to be relatively quite rare, probably because it poses an extra challenge or way of working that’s somewhat opposed to most people’s standard workflow. So I can understand feeling a little frustration sometimes when trying to search out that kind of improvised material.

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I say yes, if what I do is not improvising then what all your role models do is not improvising either. Hey, this is the internet, people like to troll. :smiley:

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