The Art of Live PA.

[The_Laughing_Man]

to me, a live PA must have a lot of spontaneity to be exciting. i want to see performers moving around, twisting knobs, throwing in loops on the fly, recombining elements into new tracks, etc.

some don't bother. even before laptop PAs became commonplace, some artists would simply create their live PAs before performing, and limit performance to some EQ tweaking. to me, this is worthless gobsh*te.

the problem with laptop PAs isn't any inherent quality of laptops or software vs. hardware, but rather that it makes it even easier to do this. or maybe the better way to say it is that more people act lazy behind a laptop.

that said, there's no reason they have to. this is a human failing, not a technological failing. a laptop-based PA can be every bit as exciting and spontaneous as a hardware PA, and given the unlimited potential of ableton, can be really, really exciting and spontaneous.

I would say nothing offers the same freedom and ability that ableton does.
I¬ve been playing electronic music live (before live pa`s I was in industrial bands) for 15 or so years, never had I more control over what I do, and with such simplicity.
Hardware PA`s are mostly, though not always, fairly linear predictable affairs, though some do push the envelope and really work the gear well, it`s just so hard to implement with hardware. And with money for acts, flight luggage costs etc, room in the club, hardware is just unworkable.

Yes there are a lot of lazy PA`s that are just people pressing play and then dancing about, but this isn`t just a new phenomena limited to laptops.
Hardware PA`s have been the same or worse, with hidden DAT and CD players being used in hardware "PA`s" for years.
I think there is a higher percentage of live pa`s that are actually doing something than their is a percentage of DJ`s who are doing anything beyond the most basic mixing.

I`m currently developing a syllabus for my live PA classes that I will be teaching and it`s really making me notice just how much the potential for what you can do live has changed over the last 10 years.