Quote Originally Posted by dirty_bass
Concerts? it`s a mix mate, and definitely unjustified ego, I`m not trying to knock you down, but thats how it is.
I see where you're coming from, but for one thing - it's *not* a mix. It's live techno - every track was my own, and every beat, note, squiggly acid line was generated live, from hardware. None of the music was prerecorded, and my role on stage was not "DJ mixing the music". A "mix" is someone playing a bunch of recordings, and making them meld together.

Hell, I've got custom-built MIDI-triggered strobe lights in my live rig! I think that's more concert fodder than "mix". I'm also trying to add a visuals computer and projector, and working with an electronics engineer to add more MIDI-responsive lighting.

The whole point is to convey the quality of the music, and to represent your sounds, not to try and prove "look, people like my stuff, see, you can hear them shouting".
The qulity of the music will speak for itself.
This is where we're going to have to agree to disagree - I think the whole point of doing live-pa is to give a performance, to give the audience a reason to believe that live electronic music is a valid artform that is different from a DJ set. I mean, if it's not different from a DJ set, what possible reason is there for me to lug $5000 worth of hardware out into the middle of nowhere, to get filled with dust and grime? If the purpose is just to represent my sounds, wouldn't it be much more efficient to record my tracks as best as possible in the studio, and bring a couple of CD's out, play them, dance around and call it a live-pa?

Oh, wait, you mean the whole point of releasing the recording as a demo... yeah, I guess. I'm not really releasing it to say "look, people like my stuff!" so much as I am trying to say "look, I'm not all talk, I'm not just releasing tracks, I can get up in front of folks and do it just as well under pressure as I can in the studio". The closest thing to a computer in that live rig was my MPC1000. I'm not kidding myself, I won't be sending that demo to any record labels... but I sure will give it to everyone I know who throws summer outdoor parties, so that maybe they'll go "Hey, I bet you'd be great at my next party!". I don't do this for a living, and doubt I'll ever be able to - I don't enjoy the recording parts *nearly* as much as the getting up on stage parts - IMHO, recording the techno is just a necessary evil, how you get your name known so you can play more live shows. :)

I have a set I did back in about 2000, where one of the coolest things about the set was that there was some guy in the audience (I never found out who) with a whistle. For the first bit, it was annoying, but then I did a track where I wasn't using my Yamaha DX-7, so I dialled up a "police whistle" patch, and we did this awesome call-and-response thing together! I played a whistle pattern, he answered, he played a whistle pattern, I answered... problem is, I only recorded the mixer, so it doesn't make any sense at all in the recording, since you can only hear my whistles. WIthout the context of the room ambience and the crowd, it sounds pretty lame, actually.

I respect and value everyone's opinions on this one - but in my opinion, the best recorded livesets have a mix of both the mixer signal *and* a stereo microphone catching the crowd. When I listen to a liveset, I want the sound quality of a mixer recording, but if I can't hear that the recording was done at a real party, then it might as well have been done in someone's studio - and IMHO, the whole point of live-pa is the performance of the techno in front of a bunch of people.

Am I making sense? Am I just deluding myself? Seriously, one of my flightcases is a full 90 pounds, and my studio is in an attic - I have to beleive that doing the techno live is worthwhile, if I want to continue carrying that flightcase up and down six flights of stairs every time I do a show... if all anyone wants is a high-quality mix, then it doesn't seem like it's worth it.

That being said, I have a headliner timeslot at another outdoor party next weekend, and I will do my utmost to ensure that I get the best possible recording of my set. Maybe I'll even release a version without crowd noise - but that won't be the one I listen to. :) Coming up in the fall, parties slow down for a few months, and in that time I want to take the tracks that work best on a crowd and record, chop, arrange and master them in the studio as proper, finished tracks... now *those* won't have any crowd noise in them!