While my main focus has always been producing music, I've recently began designing my own live performance. And while I've had a few gigs in the past, the focus has never been on me or my music. And fortunately, I now have enough music to design a set around!
Designing My Performance
I've divided the main elements of my performance into three key categories: music, environment, and performance. Of course, the music will be the main focus of everything. But I also want to make something special. When I imagine what I want a Vital Mistake performance to be, I want to do more than just play music. I want to create an atmosphere that reflects the feeling of the music and really captivates those who are watching.
While I currently have a decent amount of music, I'm reopening a lot of those files and reorganizing the different sections into phrases and loops. One thing I always admired was watching performances that combines live music with their set. And I've never done that. I've only ever played live instruments or DJed, but never combined the 2. And this is definitely a key feature that I want to incorporate in my sets.
Lighting can be a very powerful thing. And when it is combined with sound, it just creates this atmosphere that captivates you. I've only seen a few truly amazing light shows, but they were mesmerizing. Another visual concept that I've always appreciated was Black and White because it has a classiness to it that a lot of color schemes don't. But I definitely want to design a light show around my music and create an environment that mesmerizes everyone.
This will be something special. I've been to amazing performances where the DJ would incorporate live music and elements into their set. And every time, the audience absolutely loved it. Unfortunately this is still something I am figuring out because I've never combined the two. I do believe a live set would truly make my performance that much more powerful, especially since all of my songs feature orchestral elements.
A few months ago I didn't have a vision. I had no idea where I wanted to go with my music. But in the past few months, that vision has become more and more clear. And while a lot of this is new to me, I'm excited to begin my journey and share it with the community!
designing the atmosphere is almost as important as the music itself. But always take into account that the set up has to support the music and be coherent, so the audience can feel coherence and sense of unity :)
Absolutely! Every once in a while you get to see someone who put a lot of time into everything and it all comes together in a magical way!
yes effort always pay back!
People often forget about the performance design aspect of any live shows, whether you are a DJ/producer or working with instruments. I used to use a tascam digital 8 track loaded with all my loops that I made on a loopstation for my live performances. That was tricky because I had to know at what times to bring the faders of each track up and down, sometimes multiple fader movements at the same time, while singing over the tracks, but it led to a cool byproduct which was the songs would always come out uniquely every time. Performing is tough work m8, keep it up :)
Performance is definitely tough. That's awesome though, you definitely have more skill than me then since I sometimes have to rely on the sync button. It's tough, but so exciting! What do you use now? I'm using Traktor, Numark Mixtrack Quad, and IK Multimedia iRig pads.
I moved over entirely from playing everything live and looping, then recording into my tascam and using that to perform, to creating everything in FL Studio. Definitely an adjustment for me, but it offers so much more ease of editing and so many more sounds and tools to work with in general. Check out my soundcloud to hear some stuff made on FL studio.
very good idea! performance is gaining momentum and is becoming a very fashionable trend in different cities and countries. good luck to you in your performances. will succeed!
Thank you :D It's definitely a trend that I think is here to stay because of how much it adds to a performance!
it is your decision)
I've been working on pulling my live set together as well lately. It can be fun playing the records of other people, but there is something magical about performing your own music live. Something chaotic in keeping all your machines and musical elements going and pushing them to the edge. Best of luck to you. It is a huge step moving towards performing like that.
The visual will awaken a certain part of the brain and sound will awaken another part of the brain. When the two are working together then something special is happening. I see why you want to do this.