GRAYAREA
May 1, 2004 12:00 PM, The Editors
For the members of Grayarea, the idea of live electronic music is a constantly evolving concept. In its current incarnation, the band — which comprises Nosmo, McRae and Ruin — has sought to create a careful balance between traditional live instruments and a core foundation of loops and samples. Armed with a trio of Sony Vaio laptops running Ableton Live 3.0 — as well as a bass, a guitar, a couple of keyboards, a mixing desk and miles of MIDI and instrument cables — the group has striven to distance itself from other acts that are content to just press Play and “look busy.”
The first process of preparing the band's material for live performance involves endless hours or preproduction in which the core electronic elements are cut into smaller usable samples and the core synth tones are re-created or approximated on a Clavia Nord Lead 2. “When we play live, we are basically doing improvised reworks of our studio tracks,” the group explains. “So the only things that are constant are the lead lines and vocals if there were any in the original. We tend to update songs as time goes by, so every couple of months, the beats will be different or we'll add new bass lines or sometimes even shift the key of all the loops so that we can mash up a couple of songs that were originally in different keys. We build our tracks using loops of beats and repetitive melodic elements and leave out any parts that can be played on live instruments.”
The band members themselves keep things relatively simplified by each concentrating on certain instruments and musical elements. Nosmo handles guitar and bass, McRae takes care of the live percussion and plays a bit of bass, and Ruin takes on vocal and keyboard duties. “All three of us switch off sequencing various tracks by way of the two main laptops and triggering more loops and samples on the third laptop,” the group says.
Grayarea has learned that to create a good-sounding live mix, it's important to leave the loops relatively uneffected and to mix everything from the stage. “We like having our loops and samples fairly dry,” the group says. “There are two reasons for this. The first is that we have an awful lot of loops to choose from, and this means that the more effected your loops are, the less loops you can use at one time before the mix gets too cluttered. We do apply filters, reverbs and delay to some things on the fly when we need to. Second, the drier the loops are, the more options you have as far as which loops you can and can't mix together.
“Based on the wide range of soundpeople we've encountered over our 50-some shows, we don't leave anything in the hands of a stranger. We handle our entire front of house sound onstage via the Allen & Heath board and require the club to provide us with two cables: left and right. Throw a few monitors in for good measure, and we're all set. Often, though, this is still too much for some, and we end up scrambling last minute to try to make things work. More than a couple of times, McRae has had to teach an impromptu course on basic audio concepts to so-called soundpeople.”
Even though the group goes to great lengths to ensure that its shows go smoothly (creating backups, packing extra cables and relying on live instruments), as any seasoned touring musician knows, accidents still happen. “Bad shows tend to stem from unexpected, unpredictable events beyond our control,” the group says. “At the San Diego Street Scene festival, we lost power on the entire stage about 15 minutes into our set. It took them about 10 minutes to get it back up and running, and it took the crowd about nine minutes to realize that there were six other stages. At our second show ever, we got a little out of hand with the cheap bourbon and nearly pushed our whole setup off the stage and into the crowd.
“The best shows tend to involve the most open-minded audiences,” Grayarea concludes. “At times, a club crowd won't react as well to guitars, tempo changes, half-time breakdowns with live drumming or anything else even remotely musical. The shows that are infinitely more fulfilling for us are those where McRae starts pounding on the traps and is immediately met with a wall of screams, jealous boyfriends and beer flying everywhere. A recent stop off at the infamous Monday Night Social event in L.A. had to top out the list. McRae took off his pants, and the crowd still went wild.”
THE STAGE AREA
Ableton Live 3.0 software
Allen & Heath GL2200 mixer
Clavia Nord Lead 2 synth
Evolution UC-33e USB MIDI controllers (2)
Korg microKorg synth/vocoder
M-Audio Radium 61-key USB MIDI controller
Sony VAIO laptops (3)
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