“It’s okay to not have a plan — it’s okay to just jump and see what happens”: Circle of Live is an event that brings together artists for spontaneous improvised performance. Ableton filmed Clark, Rival Consoles, Sebastian Mullaert, and the organizers at a recent event. Here’s what we can learn from how they work (plus some more Circle of Live selections).
This conveniently coincides (accidentally) with the series on how to set up to play together with other people in Ableton Live. That included playing in tune and playing in time. (I know I’m going to wind up referring back to those, external-brain-style!)
But that mainly focused on solving the technical setup; here, the creative and collaborative sides come to light. The documentary meets the artists, walks through the stage setup, explores some of what goes into event planning and artistic intent, and culminates with the show. It should be inspiring to anyone who’s put together this kind of ensemble before, or has an itch to do so now.
The rigs
Let’s look at this case, technically speaking. I was taking notes, so here we go.
Ableton Link is the timing source here. They’re not into Link Audio yet, but they could choose to go that route in the future as Ableton notes in comments; either way, Link for timing works the same way (see the guide). (I’m guessing even if Link Audio is involved, it won’t really replace the use of the analog mixer here, though.)
Artist by artist:
Clark:
Sequential Prophet-6
16-channel analog mixer (Allen & Heath, right?)
Elektron Analog Rytm
Live synths
(Ryan Lee West) Rival Consoles:
Oxi Instruments OXI ONE
Sequential Prophet Rev2
Arturia KeyStep
Make Noise Strega (their Alexander Cortini collab)
Ableton Live as the clock, plus Live’s own stock effects [often ideal for predictability in live sets, as we noted last week!]
…and he doesn’t mention it, but I spot a “vintage” Launch Control XL from Novation. (Still mapping my new-revision model!)
As he describes it: “From the very big and aggressive to the very background, supportive ingredients — blurring between these two worlds.”
Sebastian Mullaert
Roland Boutique SH-01A
Roland Juno-60
Custom controllers by Yaeltex (love this crew — talking to them this week! see the splashy red controllers…)
KORG microKEY keyboard
Submixer (the xone:96); outboard BOSS looper
This is a good example of how you’d mix gear with MIDI clock to a “hub” device that’s synced up via Ableton Link. And in his case, he uses Ableton Push to record phrases; it’s always helpful to have some kind of sampler with hands-on control.
More circles, more live
Circle of Live has hosted just a who’s who of incredible live artists — the answer to anyone who claims that live sets can’t stand up to DJs. (Blech! Begone! Ye are not welcome here on CDM!) In all seriousness, I’m blo;wn away by how consistently audiences respond to live sets — even “rave” and party crowds. Maybe even especially those crowds, as they’re in the mood to be spontaneous, adventurous, messy.
Here are some brief moments of the amazing JakoJako, Joep Beving, and Laura Misch joining, for instance.
There’s also the STOOR live set series, which has teamed up with Circle of Live, too. We’ll hopefully be talking to Speedy J soon here on CDM, so while I work on that, here’s a dream-team of other favorite folks like Erika (and this whole lineup, really).
Now, sure, some of these folks are hardware-only … but if you read the guides to playing in time and tune, the Ableton Live setups I’m discussing absolutely prepare you for playing with folks who show up with hardware (or acoustic instruments). It shouldn’t matter; you’re trying to remove technical barriers and let your human performances gel.