RadioSpiral Wizard of Hz Performance Notes

Last time I did a live streaming performance for an audience, it did not go well. I had long pauses, the mic didn’t work, and miscommunication over Slack to the remote venue resulted in my getting cut off before my set was finished. And this was even after a good bit of practice.

So when I signed up for the Wizard of Hz concert on RadioSpiral, decided that I needed to have as much backstop as possible in place so that no matter how tangled up I got mentally, I’d have a fallback to something that sounded good and would be a nice navigable arc from point A to point B. Ideally, I should have something that would sound great even if I got called away for the entire set!

My go-to process for this is Scape. I’ve had it since it first came out, and it meshes very well with what I enjoy hearing and enjoy playing. I started off with the Scape playlist that I often use to relax and get to sleep; this is a seven-scene playlist, with the transition time at max, with the per-scene time adjusted to be just a bit over an hour. This gives me a fallback for the whole hour; I can pull everything else back and lean on Scape while I decide what the next section should be.

In addition, Scape provides a very nice backdrop to improvise over, so I can be playing something while Scape gives me a framework.

I then put together a couple of Ableton Live sets: one built on the Arturia ARP 2600 and Buchla Music Easel emulations, and another built on Live’s really nice grand piano and the open-source OB-Xa emulator, the OB-Xd. I finally figured out how to change patches on the OB-Xd about 20 minutes before showtime.

I had set up a piano with a nice looping effect from Valhalla Supermassive (Supermassive and Eventide Blackhole figured heavily in the effects), but ended up not using it, and doing a small Launchpad set instead using the Neon Lights soundpack.

I was also able to open and close with the large singing bowl, played live and processed through the Vortex, which was a nice real analog performance touch.

Overall, I strove for a set that sounded played-through, but that had enough breathing room that I could fall back on Scape while making changes (switching Live sets, etc.), and I think I achieved that.

I did have Audio Hijack recording the set, so if it sounds OK, I’ll be releasing it on Bandcamp. (Followup: it came out pretty well! Definitely at least an EP.)

Only real issue was a partially-shorted cable between my iPhone and the mixer that I didn’t figure out until most of the way through the set.