Periphery - sample and the complete live set

[sarana]

Hey all,

here's something from the last weekend. I took part in a squatting operation in Helsinki. We cleaned up an old abandoned villa, and a week-end long party took place there. I performed on the Saturday late morning...

https://soundcloud.com/sarana/periphery-live-excerpt


The 1 hour 20 minutes long set on archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/srn2015-09-19

I had the chance to perform in front of the main PA, which took me really into the sound. With good monitoring anything is possible hehe. I'm really happy about how it came through.

A couple of pictures of the surroundings... The pond near the place was chosen as the most silent place in Helsinki once.

IMG_3468_1000.jpgIMG_3475_1000.jpg

[synkrotron]

Nice

I wish I had the ability and confidence to do a live ambient electronic performance... I just know I would "F" it up, even though I'd probably be okay...

[sarana]

If you are doing your own thing, what you most like doing, then it's yourself there on the stage, and there's no way you can fail in it. You know best how you should sound like - nobody else does. There can be no mistakes. Everything that comes out from the speakers is you, and that's always interesting. Whatever you do there you are at your own peace.

I'm dependent on the technology so much now, compared to the past times when I performed with only instruments, that I have always little fear that something in there fails. Even then, it wouldn't be something on me, but on the computer for instance. That's forgivable.

Ambient music and performances are pretty relaxed, compared to when one should play something that everybody expects to come out in certain familiar way. In the sound design sense one could say that the music should sound in certain way, and that's somewhat true, because of how the sound acts physically in the space. If one desires to have an impact then it requires something from how the set is mixed. Although the impact can also be silence.

I'm most confident while performing when I know exactly how the music sounds like. I've noticed that the performances where the monitoring has been inadequate or completely lacking have also the least intensity. It's like being lost without direction. The music itself is the best guide and comfort, so in essence it comes to trusting yourself. And that comes only through rehearse.

One has to always start from somewhere. At every performance you are the best you can be, however it went. There's always room to improve though, because ultimately you are learning about yourself, and that's an endless voyage.

[synkrotron]

Nicely put sarana...

So, what "tools" do you gig with?

[S1gnsOfL1fe]

Oh man so awesome! Must have been an amazing experience. :hypnotized: Thank you so much for sharing.

[sarana]

I used to gig with two keyboards (Korg Polysix, Ensoniq ESQ-1) and an assortment of sound processing gear, but the package was pretty heavy to carry around, and the sonic possibilities were limited in the end. I then had the idea to transform sounds themselves into music, and chose to develop the process on Max/MSP. The spectral process involved is rather CPU intensive, so at least for now I need to carry a laptop on me.

I've built the set around that process, expanding it wth a synth module (Virus TI2) and analog filters such as Jomox Moonwind. I've also created four part sampler and a spectral synth within the process. Since the change to this setup I've only looked for as compact and versatile gear as possible, so that everything would always fit in only one case.

I'm now planning to expand the set with some kind of a keyboard, which would fit with the microtonality of the music and with which I could also play with it as it emerges.

I've also build the mixer with Max, and I control it with an iPad with Lemur. I'm in the process of lemurizing the whole process so that I wouldn't have to fiddle with the laptop so much.

I'm pretty happy with the basic setup, and I'm slowly advancing the original idea of smooth and organic transformation between sounds and music in details.

[synkrotron]

Okay, thanks for that...

Like you said in your earlier post, practise is a key thing here... You can only do so much "on the fly" stuff, I would imagine, so you at least have to have an idea of what sounds are going to come out of those speakers.


I have to say that I have never ever been to see an ambient musician perform, at least not in the most recent styles... I have seen Tangerine Dream when much of their performance was improvised, and I loved those shows. But I've not seen anything like that at all since those days. I wouldn't even know where to go looking...

Perhaps I should fix that first... I seem to remember that some electronic music shows have been put on at Jodrell Bank, a radio telescope not far from me, so perhaps I should start there.


thanks again

andy

[sarana]

Oh man that place would be awesome to witness an ambient/electronic music show. As a child I devoured all of the space related literature I could find and the name of the observatory has been burned into my subconscious as something epic.

I thought about Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schultze when I listened your music on Soundcloud. So cool that you've seen TD live, I'm jealous. I'm really fond of their early 70s releases.

Nemesis and E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr still carry that light onwards. They both performed as part of the Ambient Music Conference 2014.

Nemesis:

E-m covered TD in this gig a few weeks ago

[synkrotron]

Yeah, I saw TD for the first time at Liverpool Cathedral in '75 (I was 15). In fact, that was my first ever gig that I went to...

And thanks for listening to some of my stuff on SoundCloud


And a bigger thanks for those video links :D. They are quite an inspiration, and, given the chance, that's the sort of stuff I would like to be involved in, as a two/three piece. I'd be limited to more of the weird stuff and sequences because, even though I've had keyboards for over thirty years now, my skills are not as good as they should be...


cheers

andy

[sarana]

Thanks Chris, I'm glad to be part of the community. Andy, you'll find your group I'm sure of it.

That Nemesis performance was out of this world, full of emotion. Unique meeting of a couple of real grand old men. Esa Kotilainen who's on the right there brought the first moog to Finland in the sixties. I'm lucky to have witnessed the meeting (thanks to you Chris again)

[Sky High Diamonds]

This has been a really interesting and insightful thread to read through :biggrin: I love the idea of setting up somewhere abandoned and remote for a live performance. It really makes for an experiential time with the sound and landscape.

[sarana]

That's a nice thing to say. I see you also use natural sounds (connecting on the SoundCloud now). I think that's important. For me ambient is to blend in and to assimilate to the greater forces, which we can only carefully observe.

[Sky High Diamonds]

That's a nice thing to say. I see you also use natural sounds (connecting on the SoundCloud now). I think that's important. For me ambient is to blend in and to assimilate to the greater forces, which we can only carefully observe.

Agreed. I like to take natural sounds and distort them though :D