kent williams wrote:
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 8:17 AM, Kevin Kennedy <the...@gmail.com> wrote:At the end of the day (or night), does it really matter? If it moves you then it moves you. If not, what is the point?I think that the distinction between 'Live' and 'Not Live' is blurred at this point to where it's meaningless. I've had the privilege of watching the two performers who have put the most effort into their 'live' performances up close: Shawn Rudiman and Stewart Walker. They both have put a huge effort into making their performance mean something more than pressing 'play.' And they both build their sets out of preprogrammed patterns. Shawn works his drum machines in write mode, but any time I've seen him play he has an MMT8 full of patterns to drive his synths. Stewart will even occasionally drop a complete track into his set, but only if it's one of his tracks that's so old he doesn't have separate parts for it. For both guys, they're making dozens of decisions every minute about how to shape their music, and their goal is to engage their audience.
To me, your description here is quite in the spirit of what I think of as a "live" performance.
Even if what is being manipulated are preprogrammed patterns, if the artist is manipulating the patterns and making decisions in real-time to affect how the music will progress, it is a "live" performance.
Obviously, there is a wider range of "liveness" in electronic music than in traditional music. Kraftwerk, Xenakis and Senor Coconut come to mind.
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