Updated: Jul 22
I've been thinking a lot more about what I would want to do in a live show lately.
I know there is virtually no chance I can showcase my mixes in a satisfying way in a live setting- and that's okay! I think live music is a very different type of experience anyway, and it should be treated as such. In a mix, technical, intricate, and tiny details can really shine and bring a song to life- while on stage, sometimes bigger, more decisive movements are easier to get into, and more satisfying for an audience who might only hear your song once.
I've been thinking about what makes a good live show for a long time. (It's probably been percolating in my head since middle school, when I stood on "stage" with 3 other teens every weekend in the methodist church gymnasium as part of my youth group's Praise Band...) In 2021, my friend Lindsay started dragging me (willingly) to Columbus/Cleveland tour stops for various artists she likes who happened to be playing in Ohio.
I've learned a lot from those shows, and I've taken note of things that I think do/ do not work. I could spend the next four paragraphs detail interesting things I've noticed, but that's probably best left as the topic of another post, but I will outline some of the more compelling and relevant lessons I've learned from observing these shows here:
• First and foremost- a show is a show. It's a visual and performative experience as much (or more) than it is auditory. In fact, the sonic experience at a live show can often be quite poor (for both big, and small venues) and there are precious few things a musician on stage can do about it in the moment.
• A synth/keyboard/piano has all the stage presence and charisma of a brick. It simply does not move (which limits the players expressive capability/ presence quite a bit) and playing it live does not showcase the story of sound very well at all. It's sad, but it's true. Even Liberace recognized this reality, and solved the dilemma by covering his piano (and himself) in diamonds. Pianists have been playing keyboards with their toes and elbows for decades to give audiences something to look at and remember. In a band, the guitars, basses, drums, and vocals, all have a lovely and satisfying spectrum of visual articulations to play with. Each note/beat/action is anticipated by an obvious and visible build up which gets released as sound directly proportional to the way the instrument is played. This creates a very satisfying and engaging experience for the audience, even at a distance. Even the greatest, most expressive keyboard player in the world cannot possibly show you the difference between moving their finger 3/4inches very quickly VS very delicately from 50 yards away. The action (the part of the piano that hits the string) is invisible- shoved inside a wooden box. The best (and sometime only) place to appreciate/view the technical and performative aspects of a musician interfacing with a keyboard is from the piano bench, or, with the piano open- staring at it's vibrating guts.
Synthesizers, especially, can seem obscure when presented on stage- the sound they produce appears almost arbitrary and completely disconnected from the instrument. Each switch/button/knob looks almost identical from a distance, and for each parameter the %0 position looks essentially no different from the %100 position (even though the difference in sound might be massive). No one in the audience is really able to expect/ sympathize with the transformation in sound that is going to happen when you twist a knob they can't even see.
So... understanding that a show is a visual and performative experience, and a synth/keyboard does not inherently play to these strengths very well- over the last few years I've been workshopping some ways to make the synth more visible and present on stage: (Of course, I could also simply play guitar, but that's not nearly as exciting, distinct, or memorable- especially at smaller venues where every other act is a solo guitarist/vocalist...)
Inspired by my experiences growing up playing in concert/symphonic band in school, I've experimented with ways to bring a more panoramic acoustic experience to a show using multiple small speakers. The idea is that people in the audience can each hold a different part in their hands, and feel/experience the song differently depending on their proximity to the different parts (like players of a particular instrument in an orchestra). I can use my synth and my computer to record, loop, and route individual tracks in real time. While that's very exciting, it's been logistically challenging- and now that I've started to more intimately understand the organizational flow of a small-mid size event, I've realized that setting up and tearing down something so elaborate might be too cumbersome and disruptive to bring to do all the time. Additionally, this type of song is probably not the only thing I'd want to showcase, so all the setup would be for maybe a 5-10 minute experience, and then probably not used again for the rest of the show? Not ideal.
Another project I've worked on involves designing and programming motorized devices that respond to sound/analog audio signal. I've prototyped an Arduino that listen to the input from an 8th inch audio cable, and translates it into movement of a motor, and it's going pretty well! I've made a lot of progress on this, but it's still a bit buggy, fragile (IE: they're all on breadboards right now), and it's cumbersome to setup and troubleshoot on the fly. I have a lot of ideas for how I might expand this in the future, but in the present, I feel like I've taken it as far as I reasonably can without committing to an enormous investment of time and money. The next steps in this project are going to be a bit expensive and I'm not sure if this is the right time to dive in. (Maybe this is a good candidate for a Kickstarter project?... or something to pursue with a grant? or in an academic institution?)
I've also explored ways to create more visible/unique physical controls that attach to my synth. This has proven much easier to implement- and (since I'm blessed to have access to a 3d printer through my work) relatively easy to produce and iterate. I've gessoed, hand painted, and finished a few dozen funky potentiometer knobs, and they've turned out really well! Some of the more adventurous shapes can really change the way you think about interacting with the instrument. I originally started making these as a way to make it easier to reach/ articulate certain combinations of knobs on my synth with one hand. Some of the knobs can even hold other objects (like small flags, flowers, or whammy bars)- which all stick up out of the synth in a very fun visible way. They really transform the act of rotating a tiny 1 inch knob into something that can be seen (and therefore felt/ anticipated/experienced) an the audience.
As I get more opportunities to play live, I'm excited to start showing these projects off! I'm sure there are many more lessons to learn once things step out of my apartment and into the real world of live music, but I'm excited to see how they evolve!
I've also thought about opening an Etsy store to sell my funky synth knobs. I'm sure there are other musicians who might enjoy them- and beyond synths, there are also guitars, amps, and pedals which all use similar knobs. There are already people out there making colorful knobs, but most are pretty standard shapes, sizes, and colors. None I've found are hand painted, or nearly as unique as the one's I've produced. I feel like there's a lot of room to do something more whimsical in that space, and I bet people would be into it!
Last week I got to play a few songs from The Queen of Time live for a small house show. I always intended to preform live, but I didn't know what kind of venue would be right, and I simply didn't have the connections to get into a place that hosts small upcoming artists in front of a receptive audience of peers.
I know it's unconventional to make an album first, (like, before you even know anybody) but putting money and time into making something that I believe is good has worked for me. It's been the key to getting in to a wider world of musicians and organizers I've always known I needed to be part of if I ever wanted to see this grow. Most of the doors that opened so far have been smaller social things- but every step counts, and as you do more things, you start to know more and more people. Even on a micro level, it has really transformed the way people think about me as a musician. Before this, I had no proof, but now, I have an album you can look up, and new people who enter my life can see that I take this seriously and I'm not a total hack! (at least not all the time)
I met such amazing people at this house show, some of whom were long time musicians before ever writing their own songs. I met people who play as many tiny shows as they can, and I met people who wrote their first song last week! I feel like I'm somewhere in between. I've written many many songs, but released very few, and played my own stuff live very very little.
I'm so excited to see what comes next! I'm excited to grow and become more public as a musician. I'm realizing that in this world you're going to build up connections organically over time, and it has to start somewhere. It seems like everyone I've met genuinely wants to see everyone else grow and thrive creatively, and this fills me with joy. One of the core rules I try to live my life by is to "deal with good people." I'm excited to get to do more small shows like this in the future! I can't wait to see where it leads! 🥰
My friend played this song for me a long time ago and I recently rediscovered it- and since then I have not been able to stop thinking about it. The other day I realized it's been distracting me every time I sit down to work on my own music... There was something baffling about it that I just could not let go of- something I completely didn't understand that felt like a magic trick.
I'm a huge fan of interesting structures in songwriting. Sometimes I think about a song's outline like a vehicle. Many, many, journeys are made in some version of a standard 4 door sedan/suv. It's a format that works decently well, and gets the job done. For many journeys, we probably care more about where we are going than how we get there. But... if you wanted your vehicle to go really fast, or launch into space, or dig a hole through a mountain, or submerge underwater and roll across the seafloor... a 4 door sedan is not going to cut it. There are some places you simply cannot go (some goals you cannot achieve) unless you build something new for it. I get really excited when I find a song that requires a new type of vehicle to get where I want it to go- that's when I know something really special and cool is happening.
Liquor Store is a 3 wheeled sports car of a song.
When I listened to again the other day I realized that the sections were organized like nothing I've ever seen in a pop song. There is a super early chorus- but it's not?* (it never actually comes back in that form) and there's gutpunching secret special long verse-bridge thing?* right where the second chorus might be? and there's this rude, moody, sneaky lead guitar riff that fills in all the cracks and glues everything together... It's cool as hell.
I don't usually care much for covers, or spending lots of time learning other people's songs- but desperately needed to take it apart and see what makes it tick, lol. So I opened it up in my daw and started making notes, dropping pins and cutting it up to try to give a name to everything that's happening. There is A LOT to love about this track.
Naming sections in this song feels wrong- or, it requires somewhat loose, flexible definitions of these things (at least within my own musical vocabulary) It's really a song full of motifs, that follow their own logic and achieve musical goals in their own ways. I think this song is an excellent example of how to break out of the conventional verse/chorus structure, while still achieving similar musical goals.
The intro is a rude, bossy guitar lead played over the main beat/ pulse of the song. It introduces something we can call "home" and indeed it does act like a "home"- returning 4 separate times throughout the song.
Then suddenly right after the opening, *WHAM* the song hits you with this big Chorus*. We know it's a chorus because it sounds huge, it has tons of elements, it's bold, layered, and rich. It wraps you up in this world of sound and texture... and then suddenly before the lyric finishes- it gets cut off by the first verse.
The first verse builds like you'd expect, until it reaches a climax- and breaks away into this quite, smaller section- it almost sounds like the song got distracted by the line "Liquor Store" and meandered into this funny little bridge bit... Which is then relieved by a bridge featuring the second instance of the intro guitar lead.
Then we enter verse 2... still without ever returning to the landscape promised by that first chorus in the first propper section of the song... At this point, we've been shown all the elements of that chorus separately in the first verse, post-verse?, bridge etc... but still no return of the big vocals and gut wrenching lines from that first chorus. Verse 2 brings more wordplay, and morphs into a big call/response cheering? section. (It's a vibe, you gotta trust me, it's awesome.)
This time, the verse give way straight into... another section dominated by that intro guitar riff, as another bridge :) lol. That makes 3... I think this section works only because of where we are going next (BIG bridge energy). It just wouldn't flow right to have the previous weird cheering/self actualizing moment come right on the heels of the next big reveal, lyrically. This bridge serves as a musical buffer of sorts.
Then... FINALLY. We arrive back at the opening line. The chorus has finally returned... but this time all the instruments we've known so far drop out, and suddenly there's this big, booming piano chord rumbling underneath. It's dramatic as hell. What I love about this section is how much it both follows and breaks my expectations. Like- I know that at this point in the song I'm ready for a change in texture, and a more conventional "bridge" moment... but I also know I've been waiting for that big huge chorus to come back since the beginning... and now they're both here at once!!! Ah! It builds like a conventional "bridge" adding texture and harmony and tension as it goes, and when we get to the end of the line (the moment when the first chorus got cut off by that verse)...
Everything breaks down- there's a double chorus, with a second half that's completely different from the first. All the elements get thrown back into the mix, but this time they follow the big booming idea introduced by the piano, instead of the bouncier things they did before. Even the electric guitar that has been playing it's lead throughout has a moment of freedom to play something new over this line. It's awesome. Everything is huge and awesome.
And it resolves back down into the 4th instance of that familiar guitar lead from the very beginning which plays us out, while the vocals carry through.
I have barely touched so many parts of this song. I could go on and on about what each sound is doing where, and how unforgettable, evocative, and unique Remi Wolfs lyrics are... but I highly encourage you to go give it a listen. That song is truly unique and resoundingly brilliant. I learned a lot from spending a day studying it. I feel like I got to examine a rare exotic flower and try to identify all it's parts.
When I'm working on my own music, I often spend some time transcribing it into a midi editor. I usually do this when I'm in the early stages of writing and still trying to get my head around what ideas I have, and how I want to fit them together. I ended up spending some time doing a midi mix of Liquor Store while I was analyzing it- which you can check out here if you'd like!