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[tombryansperformance]

Performance and Retrospective

It was the day of our performance, Adam came round early and we decided to run through the piece a couple of times. 8mins 20 long, everything worked. And we headed off. 

We set up for our performance and started going through the motions, the accordion parts were going well. There was no problem. Until for some reason. I'm not sure I know why, maybe because I was using a different interface. The harmonica would only come out through the PA when a certain track was armed. And those tracks were the accordion ones. 

Which meant that when it was time for the finale, I would be missing half of the stems. Not only that, but it was really temperamental as to which track worked and which didn’t. I decided I had to improvise, cut everything out, build back up, try and solve the issue. 

But another issue arose. The harmonica I was using was a little road worn and as I bent a note (bending the air with your tongue which vibrates on the reeds differently) I blew a reed out. Oh no. 

The key the track was in only gave me 5 playable notes on the harmonica, and now I was down to 4 without it sounding horrifically out of tune. I looked at the clock and I was 7 or so minutes in. I decided to quickly create a new track, arm the harmonica. And then bring all the assets back in. And it all came back in distorted. I cut everything out. Decided to make that the ending. No one realised and waited for me to signal the piece was done. Oh dear. 

I am quite confident in how most of the piece went and I think I stayed quite calm and composed as all these issues happened. In retrospective I should of used my own interface and maybe picked up a new harmonica before the performance. I don’t regret using the accordion, as it was unique and a challenge. But I could of done more with it. I could of used different notes, made it moodier but alas. I also wish that I had been able to sus out the Behringer, as that would of made it a stronger performance. Also I usually look at the audience more. But the issues that arose took over my performance and  my energy was concentrated on sorting the problems out.

Using my guitar would maybe of made for a tighter performance but I'm not sure that was the point of the assignment. I feel like what was asked off me was to take a risk, and I hope it paid off in some shape or form. 

[tombryansperformance]

Coming Together

I decided to enlist my friend Adam to help me out. The better idea was to get Adam to play the accordion, I would record him and be able to add different effect to whatever he was doing. 

We agreed to start with him using the accordion as a drum, then he would play out some drones and I would record them into the session view on Ableton using an sm58. I chose the sm58 over a cardioid due to the fact that it would only record what’s right in front of it and is nowhere near as sensitive. He recorded fore different drones and three different drum parts, I then added some hall reverb to them to add a bit of mood. For the drones it was just on one button pushed down and the accordion pulled in and out, we would then add the octaves. None of us are accordion players, but we thought it sounded nice. Albeit maybe a little simple. 

I created a template with different effects in each grid. The first had a phaser from reason that changed notes rhythmically. I then added a tremolo kind of effect on another stems. Which created patterns out of the drone. I assigned the level of these both to different knobs on my Launchpad. I also would add a little synth line to fill some room sonically.

I wanted to add some different drums to make the piece move a little. I used a drum preset but added them to a program called Beat map. This allows you to come up with drum beats generatively. I could then assign the kick and the snare to two different knobs on the launchpad, this allowed me to create fills and build ups on the fly to transitions to different sections. 

The plan was that halfway through the piece, I would bring the accordions down, and then created a new track using a harmonica. Also rather than use effects on Ableton, I would use my Strymon Volante armed with an expression pedal to control the feedback level and create a dubby kind of delay with the harmonica. 

I created a separate midi drum file that would be used to build up the harmonica, and then for the big final. Come back with everything, including the accordion. Pull some massive screaming notes out of the harmonica and ping the delays right out. I would push the feedback to full, and start moving the time knob on the delay to create the effect of a tape being rewound.

[tombryansperformance]

The Behringer Problem

In a way to beat my previous performance related problem, I chose to look at some different midi foot controllers. 

Being a student with little funding, I decided to go with the Behringer fcb1010. I did want the Keith McMillen softstep 2 for my personal shows, but it was too expensive. 

I wanted to use the Fcb so that I could trigger each session view block on ableton to record and playback as I chose. It would of enabled me to flow a lot easier but alas it was not that simple. 

With Midi, I had made the mistake to assume you could programme it how you wanted straight out of the box. But, no. You cant with the Behringer. As it comes all pre-programmed and I needed to wipe the entire console and input my own Midi values.  

I used this video to help me out:

I spent a good afternoon doing this. And then.....

It just didn’t work. I have no idea what I did wrong, but it would record and then it would never stop playing. I tried all sorts of midi configurations to fix the issue. But to absolutely no avail. 

Best bet for now was to leave it. I couldn’t trust it not to mess up when it came time to perform. And I had to many pieces of software to rely on that I couldn’t take the risk. 

[tombryansperformance]

First Noodle

I decided it was time to start messing around. I have a fair bit of midi equipment lying around. I decided to use the Akai Mini Mix, the Novation Launchpad and the Arturia Minilab for my main Midi purposes. Best bet was to start just recording the accordion into the session view and move on from there. 

I used a couple of effect pedals in the mic chain. So it went from my Sm58 into a Strymon Volante into my Ventris Dual reverb and then into my Scarlet Focusright. The Ventris is a dual reverb engine, so you can use two different reverbs at the same time. I mixed some light hall reverb with a shimmer. It made the accordion sound nearly ethereal. 

I came across my first hurdle when trying to find a way to get Ableton to record hands free. I decided to loop the first bar, by using a small FS foot switch plugged into the sustain socket on my Midi keyboard to trigger the first record option and then go by hand. This made performing tedious and not quite able to gather much a flow due to the fact that any loop I wanted to record after the first one, the timing would always be a little off and I would have to delve in to the stem live to clean it up.

If I was to perform like that, I felt that it would look messy, and boring to watch as a spectator. 

[tombryansperformance]

Ideas

I felt a little bit lost for ideas. I knew I wanted to use Ableton is some way or other, as I have started working with it quite a lot as of late. Trying different plug ins, working within the session view.

I decided to book in with some lecturers. After a lengthy conversation, and finding out what students had done in the past, I decided to see if I could do some live loop/sampling with an accordion and a harmonica. I had an old squeezebox given to me years ago, and I've never really done anything with it, so it’s a perfect time to dig it out. 

I did find the prospect of having 3 other musicians with me quite a difficult task and opted to just have the one performer. Reason being, I felt that having people just playing instruments over what I was doing might not work, but it was also a logistical issue. People weren’t always available at the same time. So it just made sense for me to have the one person. 

When stating I was using the accordion, I was told to listen to some of Pauline Oliveros’s work. 

I listened to bits and pieces of this album. I found it interesting. The fact that it almost sounds like a synthesiser, and for its time. Pretty amazing stuff.

For the harmonica parts, I wanted it to sound a bit like Augustus Pablo. A pioneer of the dub movement. Even though he plays a Melodica, I think a harmonica can give the same feel as it’s in a similar register tone wise.

[tombryansperformance]

Induction

As I head into my second year at uni. We are given our first assignment. Create a ten minute performance using technology. 

I was a bit confused at first, as we were asked to go into groups, I assumed it was a performance that we all had to come up with together. But no. It was a personal performance with the help of others. 

I have been playing live for around 8 years now (wow, where’s that gone) and I'm quite comfortable on stage. Mainly in bands. My first sqeeze was a punk-dub band called Shoot the Duke. 

When that died its untimely death, I started a live looping project in 2019 and got ahead quickly. Managing to brag slots with great touring artists, featured on some cool radio shows and a few high brow festivals. 

I originally joined university because I felt like doing a music tech course during the Covid years would help me expand my knowledge and it has really. But it was also a good time to do it because gigs weren’t happening. I would usually play twice a week, and now it was none. So it was time that I needed. Time to be able to expand my skills stress free of whatever musical obligation I was setting myself. 

My first intuition was to do what I have been doing, arm myself with my trusty looper and a delay pedal, get the guitar out and crack on. But. It would of been a bit of a cop out. So back to the drawing board.