ForkofTuning Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 So, I've been having a great deal of fun recently using various music software to creating / mix various songs through keyboard & guitar, but I'm starting to realize I may not be able to re-create a lot of it in a live enviroment. Sometimes certain melodies I create would involve changing patches very frequently or overlaying & using more instuments [usually keyboards] than are even in the band. So, I'm not sure how to tackle this; try to re-ensemble the songs while constraining things, or use a backing track [which I would see as a problem if two patches are virtually alternating notes every few seconds as pre-recording it would replace a very large chunk of the song for the musician]. I just really like some of the stuff I've put together but am creating most of it for live's so Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffLearman Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 You get your choices, and you pretty much summed it up already. You can either choose not to create this studio music, or you can accept some compromises when playing it live. Sometimes being forced to re-arrange a studio piece sheds very different light on it, leading to a rather different result. I'm very "tone oriented". Tones and textures are very important to me, in both performance and recording. However, the best compositions are those that don't depend on duplicating specific tones and textures. When my compositions depend too much on details, maybe I'm not pointed in the best direction. But I do mean maybe, because it sure ain't necessarily so. I mean, I wouldn't ask one of the Tangerine Dream guys to cover Rubicon as a solo piece with nothing but a piano. That don't mean it ain't great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProfD Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 Less is always more but in the absence of that, try not to get too attached to every detail of the song. Think in terms of a remix. Focus on recreating the most dominant parts of a busy arrangement when it comes to a live performance. The blessing/curse of technology is that it allows all takes to be keepers. PD "The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return."--E. Ahbez "Nature Boy" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stepay Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 Gonna have to agree with the sentiment so far. Cool to put together a complicated piece just to record it, but if playing live, you've got to be able to set it up in a way that it can be done. I agree with learjeff that the "best compositions are those that don't depend on duplicating specific tones and textures". Play it live 5 times and it might sound different 5 times. Sounds cool to me. Steve (Stevie Ray) "Do the chickens have large talons?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverDragonSoun Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 Originally posted by stepay: Gonna have to agree with the sentiment so far. Cool to put together a complicated piece just to record it, but if playing live, you've got to be able to set it up in a way that it can be done. I agree with learjeff that the "best compositions are those that don't depend on duplicating specific tones and textures". Play it live 5 times and it might sound different 5 times. Sounds cool to me. Plus one again. I actually did this alot as I recorded songs early on. I tried to get around this live by using a keyboard as a midi player to help layer the songs to get them as close to the recording as possible. The problem is when you play live, things happen and the midi player just keeps going. If I turned it off I lost it for the whole song and the sound suffered noticeably. If I left it on, as a band we would all have to try and sync with it. That is not a pretty picture or in this case sound. These exeriences taught me to consider things more carefully when I record. Begin the day with a friendly voice A companion, unobtrusive - Rush Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Real MC Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 When "Birdland" was completed and released, Joe Zawinful suddenly realized the horror of reproducing the song onstage. Keep in mind that there was no MIDI or programmable synths back in those days. Queen didn't even try to reproduce the multitrack opera parts in "Bohemian Rhapsody", but I did hear of a local four piece band that pulled it off. I have fond memories of pulling off all the synth parts in "Frankenstein" in a cover band. Of course it helped using a MIDIBoard to automate all the MIDI-retrofitted vintage analog synths. That was fun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Byrdman Posted November 23, 2006 Share Posted November 23, 2006 Well, its possible to create music live sometimes that you can't record too. Leaving out a live recording of course. So I guess you do whatever works for you artistically. Maybe thinking of them as different media would work for you, like film versus books versus theatre for example - nobody expects any of those to just transfer to any other. There's a reason there's an Oscar for best adaptation! One things for sure, getting hung up in the technicalities live is going to produce an uninteresting show - you need to have enough free time to engage the audience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prague Posted November 23, 2006 Share Posted November 23, 2006 Originally posted by Byrdman: One things for sure, getting hung up in the technicalities live is going to produce an uninteresting show What technicalities? Examples? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Byrdman Posted November 23, 2006 Share Posted November 23, 2006 Originally posted by Prague: Originally posted by Byrdman: One things for sure, getting hung up in the technicalities live is going to produce an uninteresting show What technicalities? Examples? I mean that if you are bound up in the mechanics of what you are doing then the performance is not going to be a good one. You don't have to be triggering halaciously complicated sequences at just the right times for this to happen - just playing your instrument is enough if you have to worry about "what's the hand shape for the next chord?" for example. A technical term is "instrumentality" meaning that the performance is about the equipment rather than about the music. Conversely of course, given that one can trancend this on an instrument ( a piano, say), it should be possible to do it triggering sequences too. But as it implies choices to be made at the time of performance (the element of expression/variation that is the reason you are performing in the first place and not just letting a computer do it) this means that your sequences need to be variable in some interesting and attainable way so that the whole system is a performance rather than a reproduction. So what I am really trying to say is if your objective is simply to reproduce the recorded music on stage and that is as much as you can expect to achieve, because of the complexities, then its not worth doing and you should try for something else. In this case simpler will be better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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