Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Surface Sessions 07-1 Performing live with the Surface Pro 3 – Introduction”.
Hello and welcome back to surface sessions. One of the key reasons that i bought the surface pro 3 in the first place was for live performance. Making this video started getting sort of really complicated, so i’ve decided to split it up into seven parts. Each part dealing with a different aspect of what went on when preparing uh for this this forthcoming gig. So this first part is an introduction to what i’m doing then there’ll be parts on exporting loops from reason and sticking those into ableton live there’ll, be a video on how to freeze instruments in ableton, live to prepare it for performance i’ll.
Do one on how i prepared the visuals and then and then the steps towards preparing the surface for the gig, how i’m going to use it, what peripherals i’m going to use and how it’s all going to work. So this is part one. An introduction and you’ll find a link to part two at the end, and so this sunday in about four days time, i am taking it out for its first gig and i thought it would be interesting to document what i’m doing in preparation for this. Quite frankly, terrifying event: the sort of live performance i do is probably quite unique, but then of course i’m a very unique and interesting person, but then, if you’ve read my bio you’ll see that i describe it as being soundscapes in cathedrals.
Well, let me unpack that a little bit so that you can grasp the enormity of what it is. I’M trying to do, i’m part of a creative, collective, called soul circus and we design and produce multi-sensory liturgical worship services. Within that context, i produce songs and atmospheric music videos, visual projections and interactive devices. This is not a sort of fire and forget sort of press play and walk away sort of surface on rails uh.
This is kind of a creative space that has to be highly adaptive and highly versatile, for instance, i’ll be teaching the congregation a song using loops in ableton live as the musical source, which, once they’ve grasped to the refrain that i’m teaching them. It will then evolve into a performance of spoken word and then sung refrain how many times we actually sing it or what scenes i use in ableton really depends on what happens on the night and what the feel is like on the night. So it’s a very kind of improvised congregational experience at other times i’ll be using music as a backdrop, while my cohorts bring other forms of liturgy and then i have to sort of ebb and flow that music around what they’re, saying and thread it through and and Sort of sort of bring peaks and troughs to that depending on, what’s actually been said or what’s being done in that space at the same time i’ll be projecting onto multiple monitors, a series of video loops and maybe overlaying some words. That may be said together or maybe bible, verses or something else that’s being introduced into the service. For the video and the word side of things. I use quite an extraordinary piece of sort of media presentation. Software called easy worship – it’s not a great name, but it’s a very interesting piece of software, which i’ll go into a lot more detail of another time. I also want to throw in to the mix the the concept of getting text messages in from the congregation that can then be displayed on the screen.
So i’m looking at different ways of doing that. At the moment, the congregation will be encouraged to send in either prayer requests or prayer points or comments or thoughts as the service progresses, so we’ll be receiving text messages and i hope to be able to to display those at the same time. All of this is running from my surface pro 3.. So it’s not your average gig, it’s more like theater, more, like perhaps more like, perhaps a pantomime where you have interaction between the people at the front and the and the congregation, and so people are involved.
They’Re sort of doing and throwing and throwing and backing and euro fighters on the plus side, the quality of my performance is kind of less important than actually engaging with the congregation and having an immersive time. But there are a lot of elements that i need to keep in the air and there’s a lot of technology that i need to keep working and stable. Is the surface pro 3 up to the task? Well, i don’t know i hope so i get the feeling. I’M gon na have quite a few late nights between now and showtime on sunday evening.
So let’s have a look. You .