music stuff

_notes/Stellar Chant.md

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+---
+title: Stellar Chant
+tags: music
+---
+
+_postmortem_
+
+This was my first ever solo live and first ever ambient live.
+May 2022 at https://festiwalswiatla.hs3.pl/
+
+### How I prepared
+- I talked a lot with folks and gathered informations and inspirations
+- I was thinking about using Number Stations sample and got nice SkyKing recording link from my friend - decided to go with it, as it was great even without processing
+- Decided to go PC-less, so I took Deluge, Korg NTS-1, looper, singing bowl and drums
+- I decided to split whole thing into 3 parts:
+	- first, most `dark ambient` like with the sample
+	- second, more energy focused, with live drums
+	- third, more `casual generative ambient` to calm down and finish off
+- I still prepared a lot of sounds in my DAW and exported WAV files to Deluge, where I would set them up in a song
+- I got idea for underlying beat for part 2 from listening to clipping.
+- I bounced demos with friends to get early feedback
+- Got in touch with friend to create visuals and control lights
+- Got in touch with other friends to do a fireshow during the second part
+- Printed (in multiple copies) a "cheat sheet" to know when and what to do
+
+### The setup
+Deluge was the main "brain" of the operation. It had the whole song arranged, so I had to do there is to press play. I had one track with noisy synth to play at the end of part 2. It was connected directly to the mixer.
+I had a contact mic on snare drum, that I played using brushes. This mic went to a looper (so I could do other things) that went into Korg NTS-1. Korg NTS-1 had `ensemble` effect on (to make mono signal stereo again) and heavy reverb with riser delay. I played with delay time and amount to create texture. It went to mixer as well.
+I had a single mic for singing bowl, went straight into the mixer.
+Lastly, there was a floor tom with cymbals (and mic to gather the sound) to play during the second part.
+
+### What went right
+- I survived
+- Visuals and fireshow added a lot to the live perfomance
+- I did learn a lot during all this time (more on that later)
+- I managed to do it all in under a month
+- I created a set that I actually really liked
+- PC-less setup was actually working great. Deluge may be a small cheat thou, as it's basically a hardware DAW
+
+### What went wrong
+- I was too quiet. Definitely don't soundcheck without external help.
+- I didn't test how singing bowl sounds on larger scale. Hitting it was really meh and I was to stressed to do proper sound in any other way. Quickly ditched it
+- I heard myself not good enough - to the point where I lost programmed beat and was playing unevenly on drums to it.
+- Fireshow was great, but when it ended and quiet, simple music slowly started to appear, many people thought it was already over.
+- Visuals were on a laptop that died day before the show, so I had quickly made up ones. Lesson - always back up those. And have them with you, so you don't have to rely on external folks
+- I let the momentum go away and didn't finish up live version to release as studio album. And, at this point, I will probably never will - unless I revisit it
+
+
+That's it as my memory is bit fuzzy.
+
+It was great experience, great first barrier broken and I've learned a lot to make [[Spectral Forge]] better.