I really like Blawan and his work but this is not his best performance and the Interviewer is awful and disrespectful IMHO. I played with @Mutlu_Karakose and he destroys the dancefloor like no one else!
The point is that we play live in front of 100-400 People ( consisting of mostly people who don’t even know what we are doing there) or more regularly and the stuff we make works. No one gives a **** as long the groove is right and people are dancing. We don’t have to serve the nerds.
Fully improvised stuff gets often annonying for the people on the dancefloor.
You just can’t make a patch from scratch or a drum pattern on the go for 2-3 minutes without killing the flow and this is why you have to perpare some stuff.
A basic groove that you can built upon is necessary to keep the flow and the People dancing.
And that’s the only thing that matters.
I went from DJing to producing and then to live performance and this is what I learned.
He surely did. I love his Techno!
Ehrenmann! <3
by the way some promo for our next event in Stuttgart if you want to witness some live only techno for 6h straight:
I don’t know if Exsiderurgica it has been already mentioned but I will share one of his last live sessions which he plays with an RD-9 and a modular rig. The live is as improvised as you would get. He explains in his videos (which are very useful but only in italian) that he mostly starts with one pattern and then just builds everything on the fly. He uses the RD-9 to sequence the drums in the rack (mostly pinging filters to create kicks and toms) and a TD-3 to sequence pitch sequences. he doesn’t use Euclidean sequencers, he is just a very proficient (and experienced), fast sequences programmer. The music could be qualified as Industrial Techno and he clearly has a lot of experience in the rave scene.
He even shares his modular grid account which shows how barebone and essential his setup is:
It’s a shame that most of you wont understand his videos because the guy has a really interesting no-bullshit punkish attitude.
OK, the posts are cool.
Exsiderurgia, i really appreciate.
Improvising techno ?
My opinion is that improvising is just playing non programmed patterns and songs.
Old drum machines as few variety of sounds. Just modulations of instruments (909, 808…). It’s a bit like acoustic instruments. They have their basic sounds.
So, when we have new drum machines as Elektron, ie, improvising would be, imho, just have kits and the ability to tweak them.
For drum machines, in techno, improvising method would be à la Jeff Mills when he demonstrates its mastering of 909.
Regarding synths, same approach. Few sounds choosen, and construct patterns live.
That’s my vision of improvising techno. That’s why modular synths, with no memories, is pearl of synths for techno.
So, in view to improvise, few gear, but very well mastered. Improvise techno = lot of practice.
Why do we talk about improvising techno ? Because we all know that it needs skills that only could be acquised by practice and lot of work.
That’s not a question of gear, just a question of work and mastering. That’s the only and thruth way of improvising techno. That’s also it’s real value. The only reason why we like it and recognise mastering of this specific activity.
My comparison would be jango rainhardt. Just an instruments, but mastering.
That’s why, with no intention to blame or minoring the work and the mastering of any of you, my dear elktronauts fellows, i just recognise as Techno Improvisators the ones who came with kits, blind pattern and give us techno groove.
That’s the way i try to learn my techno set. This need to use/developpe our own techno grammar and way to perform.
For example, i always use 8 steps patterns. Very pertinent when improvising because it seriously reduce the grid and permit to learn and memorise figures that fit my style.
Then use all the many possibilites to variate those clasdic figures of my techno. Sounds and number of tracks involve in the figure. Just with this simple rules lot of possibilites can be chaînes and organised in total improvisation to fulfill the techno duty.
I must precise that i’m not professional musician, i no more play live, except exceptionaly when the place and the people are in the right conjunction.
My drum machine is AR. My synth vary in function of mood (A4, Typhon, Virus or little modular).
So don’t think my opinion is rule, i just bring my humble thought in this thread that i realy appreciate.
Thanks for reading.
His Italian is pretty clear, and the auto-generated subtitles help. (It’s embarrassing how much more of his rig video I understand than any random conversation in the country I’ve been living in for nine months.)
What i love about playing a fully unprepared set is the joy of hearing the music for the first time. So i have the same sonic experience as the audience.
To me it’s not better or worse than playing a preplanned set, it’s just a different experience. Both are valuable to me.
Even if I play prepared Patterns, chances are that most of the time I don’t remember them. 
Especially if you use complex synth, and not a 303 which sounds the same all the time. Or isnt 100% sweetspot synth, its a bit unlikely, to have fresh sounds every 3 minutes. I often take 15 min to get a decent sound from A4, Digitone etc, clearly too long for an audience. Altering a custom preset is a different thing than creating something new live.
There is an old vid of him using a Tr09 and Malekko Varigate 4+ on a car bonnet I find super inspiring. Each time I look at generative modules I evoke the spirit of this fella under a bridge and think … “no, don’t buy/build a thing … just rinse that drum machine like you really mean it”.
There are ppl improvising with digi/takt boxes. I think mostly saving blank patterns (effectively a patch/kit). I have huge respect because i am definitely not there yet with those machines.
That’s my approach, kits in place on a 'takt, kick and hats programmed so I have something to switch to, and just go. It’s a far cry from modular style setups in many ways, but how often do you see modular techno players doing extensive repatching during a set?
Repatching is easy…
Starting from scratch, soldering your own cables in front of an audience, that’s a true improvised set…
and coding overbridge on stage to get that multitrack experience!
Well, while I imagine this comes from your experience, and I really appreciate the material you and also Mutlu Karakose are putting out, I would say that there a few statement you are making which don’t tell all the truth and could be off-putting to new people approaching the subject. While I don’t want this to be intended as a cherry picking debate, I will try to use what you wrote to express my opinion about the subject, trying to give something to the overall discussion.
Let’s begin with the main idea behind what I am about to say. For me playing pre-programmed stuff (be there patterns, sounds or any combination of both) is like composing and playing classical music: you spent an awful amount of time refining details, then you go into a theater and you perform at the best of your capabilities for an audience that is expecting a constant and certain level of quality (be it there in the audio or arrangement realm). Is there space for improvisation in classical music? Surely, there is, you can hear the same piece played by the same musician in two different concerts and they wont sound the same because, while the structure and the notes don’t change, there a myriad of parameters (touch, expression, the response from the instrument) that will make each performance unique and which leave a choice to the musician. But, we don’t say that classical music is improvised music. So “classical” techno is not improvised techno.
When I speak about improvising techno I don’t think about playing classical music. I think about jazz. In jazz you have a basic structure already in place (the theme of the song and its arrangement) but the music emerges from the interaction between the musicians (which, in electronic music, are the different instrument). The audience frequently knows every standard by heart but they go to a jazz concert expecting the creation in the moment of new music. It’s all about the improvisation, but is there something prepared? Yes, like many have already pointed out, no musician comes from nothing and everything uses schemes already learned and rearranges them on the fly. And this is what you do in “jazz” techno.
Is one better than the other? No, they are just two different approaches. Is one more difficult than the others? No, but for a classical musician is often very difficult to improvise and for a jazz musician is often difficult to play music with the mindset of a classical musicians.
Of course, there are exceptions and artists that try to bridge between the two approaches (ex. Keith Jarret plays classical music but can also play an entire improvised classical/jazz concert; Bach was famously able to improvise fugues and counterpoint with different voices) but those are the very few geniouses born once in a while.
The expectations of the audience play a big role, if you go to a theater expecting to hear a Bach Sonata and the guy improvises on the score, you’ll probably be disappointed. If you go to a jazz club and everything sounds prepared you’ll be disappointed too.
But this is a “jazz” techno thread. So, coming to what Slawa said:
-No one gives a **** as long the groove is right and people are dancing. We don’t have to serve the nerds.
-Fully improvised stuff gets often annonying for the people on the dancefloor.
I think the problem here is the club is neither a theater nor a jazz club and people are not really educated about what’s going on behind the scene. But, I agree with your first statement, which doesn’t disqualify playing 100% improvised techno from scratch. I don’t agree with the second statement. It just means that making people dance while improvising techno is way more difficult for you than having a pre-programmed approach. STOOR episodes (and many others) demonstrate that it’s totally possible to do that.
You said you went from DJing to producing and then to live performance, that is probably why for you it looks impossible to do fully improvised stuff that does not annoy people on the dancefloor. You come from a “classical” techno background. I come from playing instruments in a free form improvised way to playing synthesizers and drum machines, so for me it looks very difficult and unnatural to sit down and pre program all my liveset but feels very natural to play “jazz” techno.
You just can’t make a patch from scratch or a drum pattern on the go for 2-3 minutes without killing the flow and this is why you have to perpare some stuff.
Well, this just ain’t true. I would re-phrase that adding “WITH THE ELEKTRON SEQUENCER AND MOST OF THE ELEKTRON SYNTHESIS You just can’t make a patch from scratch or a drum pattern on the go for 2-3 minutes ETC. ETC.” I love Elektron but more and more I am realizing that the Elektron sequencer is made for a classical approach and not so much for a jazz approach to electronic music. That’s why I play my Elektrons from an external sequencer (the Torso T1).
There are plenty of instruments that let you do a drum pattern in a matter of few seconds byt the way. The problem here is finding the right workflow. Euclidean sequencing is very handy to change a pattern in a few knob twists (as I do with the T-1). Others will find the Perkons approach (4 patterns XOX style laid out in front of you) more suitable. There many many different workflows possible here and I encourage everyone to not stop looking for their way.
Also, concerning patch synths, Mutle Karakose shows in his video that is totally possible to play a set with a synth without patches (the Behringer EDGE). Not everything has the complexity of an Analog Four. Again, I encourage everyone to try different synths and find the one that fits their workflow, it’s totally possible to play for hourse without not having patches prepared.
-A basic groove that you can built upon is necessary to keep the flow and the People dancing.
And that’s the only thing that matters.
Amen (brother) to that!
Couldn’t have said it better.
And we have a winner.
But seriously, this is so well explained and rationalised. It’s also inspired to me keep trucking on with my improvising!
But it sounds like a gate keeping approach - its only “true jazz” if you have gear X,Y which allows a certain workflow to be executed. Cant others post in this thread? Do we really have to categorize everything so strictly?
It’s a spectrum, not a dichotomy.