Modern and contemporary music performances are the biggest selling entertainment productions in the world. Millions of people travel thousands of miles to witness some of the most breathtaking musical stage acts every year and their expectations are now higher than ever due to the strength of the technology available. There are many considerations to take into account when designing and implementing a professional modern performance.

The first of these considerations, being musical content, may seem to be the most obvious of all, but this decides venue, audience and context for all other aspects of the performance. Before the performance is even questioned, bands must ensure that their electrical equipment and the compatibility between their hardware and software are going to produce a professional result. The bands must be their own worst critics in an effort to polish their performance during rehearsal making sure that the audience gets exactly what they want to see and hear. Rehearsal time is the best time for musicians to develop their sound and explore the creative ideas around the music; finding out how digital based audio manipulation programs can affect their sound and the audience’s perception of what they hear.

Once the music has been practiced until the musicians’ ‘hands have bled’ they are ready to put all of their other ideas into context. This is the opportunity to accentuate and add further meaning to their compositions using audiovisual projections, lighting and mechanics. Many performers have taken this visual element a lot further with the use of inflatables, smoke, dry ice, artwork and even pyrotechnics. This is where context is very important.  For example you wouldn’t want to use pyrotechnics at a small pub’s battle of the bands or excessive disco lights during an intimate acoustic set.

However, the latest consideration for a contemporary artist is audio manipulation software. There are many programs, such as Ableton Live, that can now be used as instruments in their own right. These programs can take a live sound and generate effects that can be used during instrumentals, silences or even as a main theme. It is also very easy to make the sound from every performance vary, creating a different sound and new experience at every show.

Many musicians believe that a performance is a re-enactment of earlier performances or the recorded audio on their CDs. The problem is the implication that a performer who chooses to play a classical guitar song on the bass guitar or accordion is uninformed and that his performance is unaware or inauthentic. Paul Henry Lang recognizes this and states, “Unconditional conformity to authenticity in the interpretation of old music, in depending on archival fidelity, may fail in fidelity to the composer's artistic intentions”. He is saying that in being unconditionally faithful to the original composition, you are in turn being unfaithful to yourself as an artist.

An artist’s improvisation of one of their own songs or a song that is performed faithfully to the original, with the exceptions of digitally enhanced effects and audio manipulations, is a prospect any audience can enjoy, and a one-off experience for an enthusiastic fan. Live digital software based audio manipulation and audiovisual projections are the most powerful contemporary performance techniques and are readily available to any artist or performer who is ready to accept change in the digital age.

Matt Eedes

Meet the Author on Dead Meet: silverxybium

Or see http://profile.ultimate-guitar.com/BetweenXybium/

 

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