The Exact Job I Asked For
In Daphne Falls, I’m on programmed drums and bass, with synths and other noises on top of it. As we lead up to late-summer and fall gigs, I’m both trying to simplify and standardize what I do back there.
There’s a bit of pressure in that this is the exact job I asked for in music. I want to get it right. This means: Get it repeatable. I want to get it to where muscle memory takes over, where certain parts of the performance are effortless, but some things are left to chance so everything is a little different.
Thus far, deciding on an MPC for the brain is easy. It’s basically purpose-built for this kind of thing. There are a hundred different ways to go, and just like the OS, there are a hundred different ways to do one thing. That’s why the whole system confuses people. I just want to find the best path for me, which is both the benefit and the curse of the entire MPC workflow.
So I point to a French band from about 11 years ago called Cotton Claw. They had a performance at a bar/coffeehouse that became super popular during COVID called Le Mellotron in Paris. The four of them sat around a table, unsynced, and jammed through their set.
A great thing for me is that there was never a walkthrough. There was never a tutorial. I had to watch this thing over and over to figure out what was going on and who was doing what. There are three different kinds of MPCs, two standalone and one computer-based, plus a guy playing some kind of Korg pad, which I’m assuming is also using MPC software.
They’re having fun. They’re engaging. There are very few timing issues. It looks like the rhythm of the programmed samples is doing the heavy lifting, with some loops thrown in.
I don’t want to get too far away from this kind of thing, where feel is important.
In Daphne Falls we have two guitar players making a lot of noise, so I’ve got to be really careful about timing and workflow. But I also don’t want to get away from having each performance be something unique from my standpoint.
The good news about creating a base workflow like this is infinite repeatability and adaptability. I can do it for or with just about anyone. I can play bass / keys / drums this way, all together or sedately or a hybrid of 2 etc.. Or I can be just the ephemeral noise guy in the background.
It’s all work that’s building on what I already know and opening up possibilities for the future.
The good news is that I could gig right now with what I have. But I really do want to get organized with my samples and my kits and have some standardization going on, where I’m using as few patches and as few kits as possible. Keep it low CPU, high effort, and headed toward some sort of mastery.
Once I’ve got that confidence, it’ll show in the performance, which is the whole point.
I encourage you to check out the above linked Cotton Claw performance and think about what they’re doing.
I listened to a talk recently from a priest discussing some of the things Jesuits do. One of them was imagining scenarios, putting themselves in the room, and going very deep on them. I’ve tried this, and it’s pretty amazing. Put yourself in the shoes of anyone. In this example, try to imagine what was going through these musicians’ heads and put yourself in that room. If you practice, you can do it, and you get a really interesting understanding of what was going on.
It’s easy to complain about Spotify and YouTube and everything else, but they are there, and you can use these things as a resource. Without them, we wouldn’t have access to all this music. Maybe people would know it locally, but we wouldn’t.
This also occurs to me as I dig around for my chill DJ set this weekend. What an amazing referential world we live in, where you can find all different kinds of music. I’m playing stuff I just recently heard, and certainly people are hearing things they’ve never heard before.
I’ve said it before, but I wish there was some way to track Shazams in an area. At the end of the day, if you’re a DJ, that’s got to be some mark of success.
A lot to think about.