Why don't you play live shows?

:sketchy:

This. And playing the social clowns game. And Covid.
Let’s erase the 2020 from our biographies. Please.

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my top 3 reasons:

  1. freakin covid
  2. freakin covid
  3. freakin covid

played just 2 gigs in 2020.

but as for 2020, the proper question is: why don’t i stream to youtube?
because i’m procrastinating with giving myself money for a camera!
there’s always some gear around that is more tempting to buy.
and i strongly suspect that streaming with a chinaphone is not a sane idea.

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Too much effort. I play in a rock band that plays (or used to play) live all the time, so making music with synths and samplers is more of a solitary hobby, like gaming for other people. I do it to unwind and solely for myself, not for other people. I do like to release my music as small edition tapes, but would not be willing to go through any more than minimal effort in that front either.

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I relatively new to the hardware game and the desire to perform live only came in late 2019. I was throwing my first show, 2 live techno/2 DJs, on my birthday in March but COVID hit.

Over the course of this year, I’ve made changes to my setup and I’m learning to play it. I’m about %65 of where I want/need to be. Fleshing out the last bits and jamming/practicing every day; even if it’s just 10 minutes. I can hammer out music that I like fairly quickly. It’s the “stringing it all together in a contiguous set” part that I’m working on. More about creating a playground to perform in than it is about pre-programming and guiding a set through. Ephemeral experience vs. structured presentation. :slight_smile:

I intend to stream around February then re-organize my first event when it’s safe and reasonable to do so. Until then, it’s practice practice practice. :slight_smile:

well, YMMV, but judging by my experience – it’s less effort than playing in a rock band, once you have a proper rig.

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Sure, you need a lot less gear to play solo. By effort I mean first of all coming up with a live set, then booking gigs, traveling, setting up, traveling home in the night etc. Takes up the whole weekend more or less.

I could maybe do a small tour if there’s enough interest at some point, but single gigs for a small crowd for no pay? no thanks, at least with the band i have my good mates with me.

ah, ok, i got what you mean.

living in the capital city has its advantages that i take as given — i can have enough gigs without traveling anywhere, so i definitely have bias in my mind.

Living in a capital plus leaving in a country where things happen :wink:

I totally forgot what is social life and i am even having a tear when seeing two people shaking hands in a video. Because of course i spend most of my days procrastinating watching useless videos.

Back in the days i was ready to play for free. Then i understood it’s killing the business and tried to get paid. Discovered that for that, you need to forget playing music and essentially spend your time on getting gigs and « communicate ». Nowadays i?d be happy to just shake a hand.
So basically most of the good musicians I know have no social skills but are geniuses in a cave. The others are proud to play half a scale and get regular gigs thanks to FB skills. Dammit, i think i missed the right era…

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Right now, COVID, obviously. Before that though, I’d play out pretty much anytime with little to no notice.
For me playing live is what being a musician is about, well largely anyway. It can be a lot of work but what isn’t? I’ve never been one to fuck around with gigs with much of a commercial motivation, they tend to suck. Keep it underground! Artists doing their art because they’re artists is the scenario where you get the best art, simple. If you’re doing it for the money you’re probably better off just going to work.
In recent years I’ve been very limited in my ability to play electronic music gigs because of where I live. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen here and it’s a long trip to anywhere it does.
I do have a band though and we play shows regularly (pre COVID). We’re loud and weird and have synths and are definitely the odd band out in our area but people still show up and some of them enjoy it. Having a guitarist, bassist, and drummer puts us in a context that artistically conservative people can wrap their heads around.
Playing live electronic sets is a great way to road test tracks/ ideas. Things really don’t need to be as polished as they do on an album so get out there and see how people react to new ideas or variations in a fun, real world way before doing the boring and tedious work of getting a recording just right.
I know none of this applies to everyone. Just my two cents.

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I used to play Local live shows a fair bit when I was in a band. We were an electro pop duo. Networking to play shows is challenging and time consuming though. As is transporting gear to and from shows that pay either very little or nothing at all.

We also struggled to find gigs as most of the scene where I live is indie folk, or blues/rock music. We ended up mainly playing shows with punk bands as it was the closest fit.

I tried various iterations of a live rig and in the end found the audience didn’t care or understand the difference between me live sequencing everything vs running backing tracks and just playing a synth or guitar part over top. I actually found running backing tracks made for a better performance as it’s easier to interact with the audience when playing a guitar or keyboard.

I sort of miss playing live as it is really fun to be on stage when there is a good audience. I don’t really miss anything else about it though. I’m fairly introverted so the rest of it doesn’t really appeal to me. Plus, while we had some fun shows, we also had our share of just playing for the other bands when no one showed up for the show (which sucks).

These days I’m mainly just writing downtempo electronica so I’m not sure I would want to perform that style live even if there was a scene for it where I live. It’s way more fun to play fast high energy music on stage.

I’m pretty happy just posting videos to YouTube and writing whatever I want just for me these days. I feel like it’s easier to reach an audience that might enjoy my style of music this way. At the very least I feel artistically fulfilled from it.

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When I lived in UK I played loads of gigs. But then I lived in towns with amazing music scenes.

Now I live near a small town in Australia. I would play live if there was a scene close enough for me to access. (And if that scene wasnt populated by dickheads)

Round here its all whimsical man/woman with similarly whimsical acoustic guitar. Possibly a stomp box or looper pedal. Uggghhh.

Theres a few venues that will book pub bands.

And by round here I mean within a 2 hour driving radius. Thats as far as I’m willing to go to play a gig.

I could move, but fuck that.

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Bit of a shame, there was a pretty decent bush doof scene down there around 20 years ago - last I heard the remnants had started moving towards more of a festival vibe catering to psy-bogans and/or weekend feral-hipsters.

Friend down there seemed pretty happy with the punk scene for the past few years though.

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Basically yes. Its all big money festivals now. Well, the few that are left.

Everything was better 20 years ago… :wink:

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For a couple years I was participating in beat battles using the OT and did very well against some strong competition. After that I began playing art shows, which was very enjoyable because there was no need to plan and could play absolutely anything I felt like.

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I’d like to play live, and by that I mean making a live video or streaming, but I’m really struggling to come up with a setup that feels satisfying at the moment. I can’t figure out the sweet spot between control, sound quality, playability and reliability.

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I only have 3 tracks. They’re shite. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to come see me twiddle knobs. The reasons are legion.

I killed my FB account recently and 100% of my gigs came from here. Next year is going to be interesting.

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Why did you kill your facebook account?

I actually enjoy playing live shows, but wanted to throw a weird observation in. When I was in a band we had a bunch of songs we played from our albums that we shuffled around, but I never felt weird about playing the same songs at different shows. Now with my dawless setup I feel like I need a new set every few shows (not that there were many this past year). Not sure why exactly. Doesn’t make sense given my band gig analogy, yet here I am.

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