What instruments did you use in the performance?
The drums and percussion come from the Erica Synths Perkons (Latvian for the Baltic god of thunder). The Abstrakt Instruments Avalon Bassline was on acid duty. 3 FX pedals added ambience and spice: the Empress Effects Reverb, the Empress Effects Echosystem and the ProCo Rat.
How were these instruments programmed for the live setup? Can you describe the process and any specific techniques you used?
For this first session, being unfamiliar with the Perkons, I used minimal and straight-forward routing: the main out (mono) of the Perkons was routed to the mono input of the Reverb. The Avalon was first routed through the Rat, and subsequently through the Echosystem in dual serial mode.
How did you approach the live session with this equipment? What was your strategy or methodology for the performance?
I programmed the patterns for the performance beforehand, allowing me to focus more on bringing them to live in the context of a track than on building them from the ground up. This meant plenty of opportunity for small, frequent tweaks to the instrument and FX parameters, with the change in pattern length on the Avalon being responsible for most of the tonal variation.
What did you like about this session? Was there a moment or aspect that stood out for you?
My favorite moments were those where I got into a flow of making small changes to both the Avalon and Perkons in quick succession. At times it almost felt like the instruments were musical lifeforms participating in a dance of step-wise mutations in which we all played our part.
What do you want to do more of, or what did you learn from the session? Any insights or areas for future exploration?
Let’s further explore this strange buzz of subtle interactions that made the experience of performing feel alive. At the same time I would like to become more familiar with the Perkons. Hoping to increase rythmic variation and experiment with more (and more sudden) contrast between sections.
Another concept I’m going to try out is to alternate a performance-oriented session like this with starting from scratch. I’d doodle around for an initial sketch, then compose the music in the process of playing it and exploring where it might go.
What did you make of the video? Any thoughts?
Joy in Exploration — Episode 1