WHY LIVE ELECTRONICS?
For me, electronics is more than a tool to get a more modern sound, more than 'just' pressing the button. For me it is a different concept to make music. And for me personally, the very concept of making contemporary music. Music that has relevance, not only artistically, but also socio-culturally. In particular, I am concerned with the question of how we humans deal with our technical achievements, which conclusions we draw from our self-designed culture and how we can work / deal with it in a positive way.
For me, the use of live electronics in combination with acoustic drumset is a logical continuation of the development of this instrument. It has always been a hybrid of sounds from different cultures, has always used the old and the new. And for me it is the instrument that is most flexibly designed by its players and in which the character of the instrumentalist can best be shown. That is why it is very important for me to continue this tradition.
I want to use this tradition and thus the analog sound world. For me it is of little interest to use pre-made samples and by my intervention, for example on a sample pad as a musician, just to press a start / stop button. That's why I decided not to use pre-made samples, but through the use of electronics develop sounds that arise within a performance.
The basis for these sounds always remains an acoustic or sound source generated by analog electronics, which is in constant motion at each very moment and offers me much more than a pre-made sound. This leads to a much more philosophical examination of the topic:
How do we live in the moment?
What is the moment
What is music for us?
How do sounds come about (through our efforts)?
How much does our environment play in a sound, be it even the slightest influence?
For me, this way of making music is a deep examination of the moment and very close to the idea of improvisation, even when I'm playing a composed piece.
It is also in the tradition of drummers to combine more tasks in one person than before the technical achievements by using technical aids. Examples are developments such as the pedal machine and the hi-hat machine that have given a person the opportunity to control more. Nowadays, a drummer alone does what four people did before the drum set was created.
There is of course a dark side and a dark side: we don't want to feel a one-man band world, but the contact between musicians and people. At the same time, we are looking to control more as a single person. And that can also be positive for the artistic result: a homogeneous and consistent image of the artist's imagination.
Now there are the technical advances of the 21st century that give a person even more opportunities to implement their thoughts in even more detail at the moment. For me, as I said at the beginning, it doesn't stop pressing buttons, push faders and turn pots open. We have to go deeper. We cannot be content with delivering an exactly predictable result through an action. It doesn't bring depth. We have to build instruments out of it, create possible combinations, impose restrictions and gain freedom from it. We can create intelligent systems that relieve us of certain tasks and at the same time provide us with inspiration for our next steps. We can not only consider technology as an aid, but can give it a character through us.
Apart, the whole technical world offers us another opportunity: we can implement many more processes at the moment thanks to fast computers, mixing consoles and more compact technology. Processes that previously included two or more separate steps and sometimes had different spatial requirements:
composition
instrumentation
arrangement
interpretation
performance
recording
production
mixing
mastering
spatialization
All of them can melt together in a moment these days. So we can expand our imagination extremely. A process that takes a lot of time, leisure and patience. It is understandable that not every musician wants to go through this process because at first glance we move away from our art, our instrument, our way of expressing ourselves. In the end, however, the circle will close, because everything that is contained in every single step is important for all the other steps. We cannot differentiate between them. The DNA is contained in all cells:
Recording = Composition
Arrangement = Mixing
Interpretation = Performance
etc.
So this is especially for us - performing musicians:
Why should we limit ourselves to the fact that a CD recording is a more or less bad representation of a live performance? Why shouldn't we work artistically with it? And why shouldn't we ship this artistic product back in real time? A creative, artistic way of dealing with a recording that - to close the circle - then influences the performance again.
