May I remind you, this is a live set

June 1st, 2006. Sanctuary Cafe Cella, Brighton. Dave House embarked on a hairbrained scheme to improvise a half hour, live remix of a mostly acoustic gig. And mostly succeeded...

~~wibbly screen flashback effect~~

Georgies' asked to organize a night featuring some of the very talanted people she knows, including herself and her wonderful band, Dogs Don't Dance. I offer my services, initially with a mind to making some ambient style noises in the gaps between bands, maybe. I'd recently invested in some new Pro Audio kit (not my grand nomenclature there but the generally accepted term, indeed) to go with my existing laptop, keyboard and soundcard. Specifically, Ableton Live (stupidly powerful music production/performance software - geek check 1) and a MIDI controller (essentially a box of knobs and buttons that you can assign to modify volumes and trigger samples, etc - geek check 2) and I guess I was eager to give myself a kick up the ass to learn how the darned things worked! I was also eager to play my new album of travel tunes (check it) in a live capacity and thought this could be the chance.

Well, the idea evolved into one of more imposing and demanding stature. "Hmm", thinks I, "I could record the other performers sets during the night and, as I go along, snip the recordings up into smaller samples - voice and guitar loops, for instance, individual snares and kick drums and so on. Then I could use Ableton to map the samples to my MIDI controller and keyboard then improvise a remix by tapping out rythms and re-recording them and looping them... or something". I knew it was possible, I'd seen other people doing similar things. I was 99% sure I could do it with the kit I had... oops, hang on, I needed a microphone...(geek check 3)... there. Sorted. "Now, how the shitting hell does it all work?!"

So ensued a frantic month of learning, pretty much from scratch, how to acheive my ambitious goal. I nearly gave up half a dozen times, usually when something totally fundemental escaped my guile (like sticking to a specific tempo with samples from disparate audio sources, and keeping it all in beat). Slowly, though, I patched together an Ableton template of cunning simplicity and some pro audio gear of rapidly diminishing second hand value due to a proliferation of sticky labels reminding me that this key makes a bass noise and that one triggers a vocal. With days to spare, I was reasonably confident I could pull it off.

~~Back to June 1st~~

I was on last so that I could record bits of everyone else. My lovely new mic was gaffa taped to the ceiling so as best to pick up the action. A wire led to my soundcard, from which a wire led to my laptop, from which a wire led to some headphones, attached to which was me. Me, in the corner, frantically recording, isolating, snipping, EQing, saving, repeating... The other acts were fantastic, the atmosphere was great and the venue was packed. Kudos to Georgie's organization.

So, my time came and I uprooted from corner to stage, plugging in the MIDI stuff and turning off the mic. I was pretty wired - the recording sesh had been intense, the lights were bright, the audience were many and I had a whole lineup of amazing musicians to follow. What followed was a clumsy 'finding my feet' tune, down tempo and a bit ugly, which only sorted itself out towards the end. Those loyal to me in the audience gave reassuring and warming applause, and track 2 was a belter. Cheeky, slow, glitchy house with a couple of nifty hooks. Track 3 proved to be my last as the night was overrunning, so, being last, my set suffered the consequences. My finale wasn't as good as track 2 but was better than 1, being a housey number with a slightly too loud but interesting ambient guitar loop. All told, a valiant effort. I couldn't really hear what I was doing during the set due to low monitors, but luckily I recorded it and rest assured it's been heavily scrutinised since!

Click here and follow the 'Dave House Live' link to hear track 2 from the set.

What stopped it being a fantastic night for me and made it more of a 'step in the right direction' type one was the reaction of the audience. Some people were loving it and I had some very positive feedback, but there was a constant (literally constant) backdrop of chatter behind what I was doing. This was dissapointing and disrespectful and I think this was due to many things. A slightly detached approach from me meant I didn't connect with the audience - I should have explained what I was doing and used more solid loops that people could recognise, especially people used to a more traditional live set up, but I love to glitch stuff up, that's my curse! Plus it was late and people were tipsy and had been sitting still all night. I also think that when some people see a computer they dismiss it as button pressing and mouse clicking, failing to see the art involved in using a computer as an instrument. The title for this post comes from Georgie's gentle request for the audience to shut up and give me and my buttons and knobs a chance.

Anyway, that last point is for another post and I've OD'd somewhat on my return to the land of blogging and must stop.

Click here

long time no...

Well, following an initial frenzy of blog action its now been 2 months since last I posted. I guess the novelty has worn off. It set me down melancholic paths, the more times I saw the link to my blog in my favourites but failed to bash out whatever was on my mind at the time.

So is this blog just me, sat solitary at my computer, adding futile kilobytes of data to the terrabytes already out there - more 1's and 0's on a drive, somewhere? Perhaps to be granted a cursory skip-read but, by and large, to be merely the ponderings of 1 six billionth of the worlds population, wholly vital to me but essentially as meaningless and/or meaningful as the next souls insights.

Ah well, eh!

I should have written about my first experience playing live music since last I got up with my guitar and sight read classical tunes infront of a panel of experts and a hall full of fellow young guitarists, their proud parents and anxious teachers (approx. 1990). This time, though, (June 1st just gone) I was armed with a laptop, a microphone, a keyboard and a box of knobs.

OK, I'll do it...