Performing live with alpha-state software – Riding the glitch?

I guess I’m still too young for being content with using commercial music making software to produce sounds, which usually in its own rights try to make things easier for “most people” (in order to become a commercial success) by compromising from the organizational control over sound and live performance in favor of the majority of music making people (as there is a big trade off between ease of use and number of options (or number of different paradigms of working with sound organization)).

This is not to say that they are bad and useless, most serve well for a good number of paradigms, and as interest in computing rises among musicians, they will get even better (for example, the upcoming Max for Live is promising, I like the idea and implementation strategy of Ableton Live and although I stopped using them some years ago, I like the aim of PD and Max/MSP too). “More options” does not necessarily mean enhanced creative options for musicians, but that should not be the main job of a software anyway… Setting self imposed limits and driving creativity using that limits by using them as a ladder to a goal is a part of the craft of musicianship, and I think that part should not be left for centralized software companies alone.

Open communities, especially open source communities has a big role on helping one to get out of this chain. The tools are developed by many contributors, who are also using them on a daily basis, and they prioritize their own musical needs.

Anyone who knows a bit about me knows about my admiration for SuperCollider (and the community!). 2 weeks ago, I had a live gig after a long hiatus, so I developed an interface for the performance (I hate writing non-reusable code so I had a design, and now it seems like it will be a long term project), something I had in mind for a long time, but I needed a deadline to get started so anyway, I kept coding for a week, and it was ready by the performance, though it was quite glitchy and unreliable at that time. I knew what the problems were, and knew how to solve them but didn’t have time. It was, umm… in an alpha state. And I actually quite liked using it in that state. And it’s not my first time trying this sort of stuff either, naturally, there has been some occasions where that state contributed to the heart of the performance, but I’m happy as long as I have some sound rolling… Things can get fixed if you know what is broken. I like the quality of sensations it produces I guess…

This was how my screen was looking like, at the day of performance:

Oh and there is this irony, a part of my performance was relying on some guitar playing, as I said, I spent a whole week of coding for this, but forgot to tune my guitar prior to the performance. Things went downhill when guitar came into play so I had to skip some stuff… Tuning the instrument is an essential thing and I’ve managed to forget it.

Anyway I’ve been coding this thing for 2 more weeks now, added whole lots of new functionality now that it’s fairly stable, usable and documented; it’s waiting for its release soon. I like sharing, and I like it when people share. Going off the tangent now, I guess I need to get back to work. Here is the recording for the complete performance if you are interested. Sorry for the guitar part…

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And as a final note, the other performer that day was bubblyfish, she makes some cool 8 bit music with authentic hardware. Check her myspace profile if you are into cool blips blops: http://www.myspace.com/bubblyfishmusic