The Live Aspect

Hey all,

I've been doing some Google-searching to help better my own understanding of this whole Techno Live beast that we're hoping to tackle, and have come up with some thoughts on how we should approach it. This is not 100% original DJ-EK material, and where I'm referencing other things I shall make a careful point of noting it. Right!

I feel that the visual aspect of this performance is going to be very important. We are putting on a show, and for as much technical know-how we put in, we have to have some excellent visual feedback for the audience. As has been stated, techno can be rather visually stagnant. So, to counteract that, we have to give the audience some of the thrill we have experienced in producing the sweet music that we're gonna create. Therefore, depending on the piece, we shouldn't be so concerned with absolute perfection if the music is being created live. On musician Robert Henke's site, he touches on this matter. He states that "there is a vague idea of how much complexity a single person can handle. The more the actions result in an effect like a screaming lead guitar, the more we feel that it is live. If we experience more detail and perfection we most likely will suspect we are listening to pre-prepared music. And most of the time we are right with this assumption." How complex do we want to be?  Here is said article: http://www.monolake.de/interviews/supercomputing.html

I'm honestly in favor of ridiculously-sized buttons for at least some pieces: they provide delicious 1:1 feedback for the audience and copious amounts of irony for us performers.

As I've been more of a rocker than technobot, this class is gonna be a great learning opportunity for me. I'm looking forward to see what other more experienced people come up with, but cursory searches for inspiring music has turned up this neat classic Detroit techno group called Cybotron:

The classic layers of techno are quite evident here, and I think I'm in love with the sweeps and hits!