Wednesday, January 2nd 2008 at Trubadur

It's still amazing to me that nobody in Trubadur said: "Go away you crazy person!". Instead they said: "Yes, you can come again next Wednesday." So here I am, announcing yet another Wednesday night in Trubadur. The 4th show in this "winter season".

I suspect that they will maybe have someone more popular than me, or even a simple CD played from a CD player. Why? They may take into account that my music does not attract much people there. The second day of the year is probably a very busy day, and they probably don't want me to drive their customers away.

Wednesday after Christmas at Trubadur

Once again I invite all friends and residents of Subotica to drop by Trubadur on Wednesday night and enjoy my special homemade electronic music. After that you can hear Bobby's selection of minimal techno/house, '70s disco, '80s, '90s etc.

Last show went pretty well. I would like to thank my friends for showing up! I worked for the entire evening and have recorded most of the show. I'll be uploading the best segments soon. Stay tuned :)

Wednesday on Saint Nicholas at Trubadur

Last Wednesday's show was canceled but now it's time to continue. If you live in Subotica and like to listen to electronic music come to Trubadur on December 19th 2007 (8-10pm) to see and hear my live-act performance. Just to clarify, December 19th is really Saint Nicholas day in orthodox calendar. For catholics it's on December 6th. In Serbia this is one of the most popular saints :)

Wednesday night at Trubadur

December 5th 2007 was the first show where I used my new live-act concept. Thanks goes to Bobby for making this show possible and also to Robert Henke for the technical concept.

Next Time

I plan to play there next Wednesday also. If you're in the neighborhood drop by. I'll probably appear between 8pm and 10pm. Let's hope someone will record a video clip of me so you can see it online later. At least I'll record the audio. This first time was really more a test, so it's better I didn't record it.

Hardware/Software

I know there are a lot of people interested in computers and other electronic hardware, especially among readers of my blog, so I'll reveal what equipment I own and use. There's a simple desktop PC with MIDI controllers Edirol PCR-300 and Evolution UC-33e. Tonight I used UC-33e for the first time in public since I bought it a few months ago. Unfortunately, I don't have a laptop yet, and also don't have a TFT monitor, so I have to bring my 19" CRT monitor. On the other hand the PC is quite new, I bought it two weeks ago. It's a Core 2 Duo E2140 with 2GB RAM. This model of CPU is the cheapest Core 2 Duo today, but it works great! The main software I use is Ableton Live 6, and the main resource it requires is RAM, so those 2GB give it plenty room.

The Concept

My new live-act concept is based on the grouping ability of Ableton Live. One MIDI channel can contain a group of instruments where each instrument is placed on a separate "chain". The "chain selector" envelope is then used in all MIDI clips to select only a specific chain. Actually, there is a chain selector matrix, and each chain can belong to a range of numbers (maximum range is 0-127). If the range for a chain is 3-5, then selecting numbers 3,4,5 will make the chain active, otherwise the chain will be inactive.

This way I managed to put different projects into one big project and still have separate control over all the channels from the original project. Bass drum channels from all different projects are in the same channel in the big project. The same goes for claps/snare, hihats, bassline, melody etc. For now I have 8 MIDI channels and one send channel with a reverb.

The idea came to me when I saw Robert Henke's project in Live where he used the same thing. I knew the grouping function before but didn't realize it's potential.

About The Place

Trubadur is a small bar near the Train Station. It is well known for it's jazz music, but sometimes there's punk, electro, disco, techno, house etc etc... There aren't many customers and that's the way the owners like it. They want Trubadur to stay a sweet little fancy bar for friendly regular crowd. If you come there with the only purpose to listen to my live-act that's OK too. Plus I'll be very happy to see people who actually want to listen to my music! Pathetic, aren't I?

Back To The Future

Anyway, I don't plan to play there for the rest of my life. The goal is to get experience, perfect my show, and off course, become more popular.