In the showcase You suck at producing shows how he uses Ableton to perform his music live using launchpad, drum pad and midi keyboard.
He also shows how he can have different sounds on one keyboards using a instrument rack and a chain selector automated to a “dummy clip” to have sounds come in at the right time of the song.You suck at producing also shows how to use a MIDI quantiser to stay on time when playing drums. The quantiser works by shifting the notes to be on the grid when playing out of time.
This setup also serves to illustrate the big difference between the creation of screen music and the actual live performance. For the live performance, the artist must make logistical adjustments to prevent the laptop on stage from crashing. This includes bouncing the complex software instruments into simple audio files and setting the plug-ins to turn off when they are not in use. Furthermore, the artist must deal with the risk of human error and the use of an invisible grid, which is a metronome going directly to the artist’s in-ear monitors to achieve studio-quality accuracy without the live audience even being aware of the presence of a click track.
This video shows a student ensemble playing Gary Numan’s “Cars,” music is a means for collaborative electronic recreation, connecting pre-programmed digital sound to tactile, real-time execution. The students construct the piece through a combination of synthetic sounds such as basslines, lead melodies, and drum loops, which are manually triggered on a Novation Launchpad, accompanied by real-time vocals and tambourines. It is a great learning device, as students can learn about digital sound and rhythm without depending on traditional notation. It is very conducive to learning, as it heavily emphasizes structure and engagement. The students must have a very in-depth understanding of the song’s structure to trigger their specific loops in just the right spots, and the novelty of the flashing MIDI pads and students’ apparent engagement can keep a viewer captivated.
This is also a great example of the difference between live performance music and screen music. We are watching this on a screen, but they are in a live performance, and a live performance is dynamic, spontaneous, and dependent on human interaction. It is a real-time event, even when they are using technology such as Launchpads. There is room for error, for human interpretation, for energy between all the participants. Screen music, on the other hand, is very calculated and locked into a visual schedule. It is designed to enhance a narrative, to manipulate the emotion of a viewer or to comment on a specific image. It is a very controlled event.