Whew! Improv isn’t just what you do musically, it’s what you do.
Period.
Last night, I played my first face-to-face live gig in a very long time. Streaming live from a studio, where you can perform in your pajamas (if that’s your thing and maybe you’re not doing video streaming) on a platform like Second Life has its own challenges (does it ever!) but the audience rarely sees what is happening*.
So last night was an exercise in real-time damage control, improvising a solution that would make them smile and applaud (throwing money, underwear, or t-shirts is always optional).
https://www.facebook.com/emom.mtl/videos/786197931074043/
Eric Wrazen, master of ceremonies and no slouch on the synth himself, presided over the first EMOM performance of the Fall season at The Wheel Club here in Montréal. It was my first performance there and only the second time I’d been there for an EMOM event (I was lucky to have learned of it, shortly after getting settled in to my new apartment here). If I said it went off without a hitch it would be a bald-faced lie.
It didn’t.
I think it was Dwight Eisenhower who said that plans mean nothing, planning means everything. What I’d planned, while only mildly complicated considering all that was involved, and what happened were two quite different things. My original “blueprint” involved using two main audio sources: the Arturia MicroFreak and the Modal Argon8m. I’d brought The Three Sisters (my three Empress Zoias, Amelie, Brigitte, and Chloë — yes, the instruments are named and labelled so it’s easier to keep track of what’s been programmed), a Boss RC-1 for some simple looping, and an RC-500 for reverb on the Argon8m. Finally, I’d brought a Focusrite Scarlet to interface the iPad with the Argon8m.
What I find continuously challenging with Argon8m is using the software — I am not a big fan of using a laptop in live settings after having a hard drive catastrophically fail just moments before doing a gig in Fort Worth many years ago (yes, I salvaged the performance and no one even knew what happened). Rather than use a laptop, I’ve been using an iPad Pro, which has brings its own issues (Gee, THANKS Apple for making it so damned difficult to interface externals with the iPad, ESEPCIALLY the whole “Pro” series — another discussion for another day, but I’ve been using a Pro in one form or another since Generation 1.0 before I ever left the States). The MODALapp is pretty dependable on the computer, less so on the iPad, so it’s always a tiny gamble.
And last night, the gamble failed. Hard.
I could not get the Argon8m to send audio to the mix. For whatever reason, nothing from “that side” of the mix was working, or sending me output to the little mixer I had brought along. As I was the first person scheduled to perform, the pressure was on to get it sorted out and time was working against me. Eric was gracious enough to start without me and I frantically began pulling cables and re-configuring the set up to work with the ‘Freak and two of the Zoias. I managed to come up with a working arrangement and then it was “showtime!”
Give a listen to the video excerpt above; I have a WAV of the performance that I will be listening to in hopes of pulling some usable audio out of for later.
*At one point in the history of performances in Second Life, the question came up as to whether or not certain performers were actually “performing” live or simply having their avatar appear and running a prerecorded track — the VR version of lip-synching. The controversy is still there and, to my mind as a performer, has cast a permanent shadow over the whole scene.
