Live performance methods for electronic music?

[Starship Krupa]

After decades of deferring it, I've gotten back into creating electronic music. 90% ITB, although I do sometimes sample myself playing physical instruments.

I love playing out, and I recently discovered a live EDM night in my area, but I don't really know where to get started with that. It seems like most electronic music artists use a combination of backing (or sequenced) tracks with them doing some things live like triggering samples and loops from a pad controller, or playing one of the parts on a keyboard.

I have Ableton Live Lite, and have putzed around with Cakewalk's Matrix, but my brain is so used to thinking of "songs" as things that are composed linearly that I'm going to have to work on thinking of it in another way. I'm no stranger to improvisation and experimental stuff, I was a fan of Terry Riley's In C  and Brian Eno before I ever played rock 'n' roll and most recently played in a Rhys Chatham ensemble with 99 other guitarists.

I have a good sense of where to take an improvised piece, and I can drop into that zone, but I need help with the specifics of using today's software to do it. Also doing this while keeping my songs recognizable through the improvisation.

I trust Cakewalk's stability enough to use it, but I know that Ableton Live is tailor made to support live performance, and I like to use the right tool for the job.

Should I invest in a pad controller? Most people I see doing this use one for at least some things, although I watched a video of Four Tet and he was using something that resembled the old Korg KAOSS Pad.

People who are doing this, what has worked for you?

[Tim Smith]

I have a full version of Ableton and I have dabbled in some of it. You are correct, it is a different way of thinking. In some ways I think you have to let yourself go. You can't really be too concerned about choreographing an entire show. Preparation is all about mapping a controller ( can be almost any controller) and selecting the loops you like. Everyone will probably have a slightly different way of doing things. Some might start out withe several known loops and parameters, others will have a recording setup and come at it with a sort of hybrid approach. Still others will 'wing it' in playing or tapping drums and bass, then adding whatever their mood suits with loops or synths. So there are three main ways-

• Using all pre programmed loops
• Using a hybrid approach consisting of some choreography and some music on the fly
• Using all played input live, making the inputs into loops and playing along with it, adding yet more loops until you have a song going live.