After the fact…

Well what a day and night – our final projects performed live at the Media Centre, Huddersfield. Exciting, nerve-wracking and most-of-all thank goodness I put a ’stop all clips’ key in!!!

After finding that I had no drivers to run the keyboard I had borrowed in order to enable me to practice at home I had, had little time to rehearse – except a few dry runs with no sound on the keyboard (kind of hairbrush in the mirror type performance) and a few runs through on the computer using the mouse – both times with no live mic – I was a little nervous on the day!

But everything in my project was ready to go, so all I had to do on the day was assign keys and practice. I’d kept it fairly simple – a big element of my live performance was the random playing of the poem which is automated by Ableton using the launch mechanism, with me just turning on and off the tracks to allow the audience to hear calls or responses by either me or Irene (vocals).

I was however still going to be operating some things live – the frequency and resonance of Operator, for the wind sound effect, master volume (haha – I’ll explain that in a minute), several clips for backing music during the vocal section and setting off each section (intro, verses1, chorus, verse2, finale start, final finale).

(I did consider using the mic through an Ableton channel so I could affect my live spoken words with a processor or effect – or both – as I performed. In the end though the mic was wired straight through the mixer).

I was so nervous when I started I forgot to turn my master volume up on the keyboard OOPS. But after desperate looks to my tutor who whispered “where’s your master volume” – it was a momentary thing as I used my ’stop all clips’ key, turned up the volume, and started again – then … it all went off without a hitch.

 * Videos of each of us performing are due to be uploaded to YouTube – I will put a link in here when they are available for viewing (I don’t know which is worse – performing live, or having a video of me performing live on the web!).

So did I achieve what I set out to?

I laid out four objectives in my project plan.

1 To record in and use live vocals of lines of the poem. Yes, I did this both sung and spoken versions, cut into clips, warped, equalised, compressed and effected where appropriate with a delay.

2 To create appropriate beats and souds to support the mood of the poem – creating clips, warping etc and building scenes. Yes, I used Impulse to create a range of rhythms, fills and special beats clips. I used the string machine and grand section sustain to create melodies and harmonies that looped and were changed to fit the section they ran in. I also created harmonies and fuller/minimal clips on the same themes. I used Operator and Simpler to create sound effects of bells and wind, and made clip variations of a whip sound that I found. I laid out the beats with melodies and sung/spoken lines and SFX to make scenes that worked together well.

3 Choose some stand alone clips and effects for the piece: Yes, I chose to make some minimal melody clips to play in live during the verses and used effects (delay and reverb) on the vocals. I also used the Operator’s frequency and resonance to effect the sound of the wind SFX live in the performance.

4 Look at basic layout of scenes, intro, main themes and practise with random drop-in clips. Yes, I created an intro, two verses, chorus and two-part finale. I rehearsed playing these in live – triggering the sections, playing in the background melody clips for the vocal parts, effecting the wind sound, switching on and off the vocal tracks to allow only one or two to be heard at any one time (these were laid out to trigger down each track randomly). I also practised using a live mic (turning down the master volume allocated to a knob on the keyboard where appropriate).

To sum up (against the original brief)

My preparation went smoothly again with many thanks to Irene who sang for my piece – and this fulfilled my area of expertise in recording-in live audio. I was also able to create beats, melodies and sound effects, and apply effects/processors to my clips, and create clip variations setting them out in scenes and the scenes into sections of the performance.

In the end, my performance ran slightly longer (but not much) than my estimate – but I had decided to split my vocals into two verses and add a chorus as this broke it up a bit (consequently adding to the length).

I chose not to use any woodwind, as I originally thought I might, as the piece was ‘busy’ enough and didn’t want to clutter it up (instead I used the Grand Section Sustain to add another layer of string sounds to build up the finale).

My performance system worked well live – I found the way I allocated the knobs and keys to the keyboard was easy to use (after I overcame the nerves which made me forget to turn up my master volume before I tried to start for the first time!) and the self-launching sections all ran according to plan (which I had, of course, checked beforehand).

I believe I achieved what I set out to do and was pleased with my end result.

And if I was to do it all again … 

I would love to have time to practise using a live mic and creating clips from that as I performed, but certainly I would have run the live mic through Ableton and used an effect which I could turn up and down as I spoke.

I would also have then recorded it all on Ableton so I had a permanent record of what I had done (we had a system set up to record from the mixer but unfortunately there was a glitch none of the performances were recorded in audio – though we have a video record of our performance). No matter what I do in my performance it will never be the same twice because of the random element introduced by allowing the vocals to trigger each other randomly.

And I think it might be nice to record in live instrument sounds and use those too with effects etc. I think I would like to use some ambient sounds, from nature and urban surroundings, to create my own live samples and play around with.

I think I might just have to write another poem and see what else I can come up with.

As I startedthe course, I was worried that as Ableton is often used as a DJ tool that I would not get as much out of the course as I have. But as a live performance tool (which of course it is and you can make of it what you want) it was really good and I enjoyed doing something a little different with it.

I enjoyed the course and learned a great deal – not just about how to operate Ableton but about recording and generally about music production.

I hope I will use this tool in the future for my own pleasure, for making unusual ‘poetry’ and in other ways to complement my creative writing interests, and to create backing tracks, ambience and ammend folly sounds/create SFX for videos which I hope to be doing as part of my business (which I will be setting up in earnest at the end of my creative skills diploma).

I would also like to explore further Ableton’s capacity for viewing video so you can create audio to go with it … but that’s another blog I think!