Image by MelvinSchlubman via Flickr

Well, I played my first live performance in about 4 years last night. A big thanks to Buenos Airwaves and the people of the Sycamore House in Harrisburg. It was a blast! Hopefully I’ll have some pictures up.

I’m learning a lot about the music I make and the genre I play in. When people ask me what kind of music I make I have a bunch of different answers ranging from electronic to laptop rock. Playing music using computer software and various electronic peripherals is fun and affords infinite creative control, but performance-wise I find it difficult to engage the crowd. When playing on stage behind a guitar there is a raw energy of always connecting with the instrument that feeds the excitement of the crowd. Playing behind a computer makes me feel more like a drummer – trapped behind a bevy of equipment, separating my energy and crowds energy. I really have to learn to adjust my thinking from being a guitar player who isn’t used to having that wall to being more like a drummer and going nuts like Animal to project a massive amount of crowd enraging energy.

The other part of that equation is the music. The electronic sub-genres that are most accessible to enthusiastic live crowds typically have very very simple beats. The magic of these genres is more in the production, quality and attention to detail of the sounds than in the creative explosion of rhythms you’ve never thought of before (exceptions apply, of course). For two completed (and one upcoming) albums my rhythms and beats reflect a mash of playful exploration, hip-hop and dance. I typically find this inhibits the typical dj-driven dance floor movements. Driving, continuous, uninterrupted beats are the order of the evening in almost all situations where you want people to dance all night long – that and recognizable tunes (mostly stateside).

But I’m learning. In addition to these reflections that I wanted “on paper” for future reference here is a checklist of things for future performances:

• Always have takeaways. Have freebies and sell-ables that people can take away from the show. I went in with nobody knowing who I was and I left with maybe 3 people knowing who I was. Moreover, there’s no telling if they will remember my name, my music’s name, or even this website.
• Practice on a PA sound system setup and bring it whenever possible. No offense to the Sycamore house, but my sound was terrible. I wasn’t used to being in a sound system. I didn’t know their sound system. When my main beat tracks weren’t shining through the other layers the way they should have, there was no way for me to know it was because my stereo output was jacked into a mono input.
• Build and maintain various live set list projects in Live and Reason. After a massive number of attempted sync settings I finally caved and pulled in all my tracks and samples into one HUGE Live project. Seriously, over 50 tracks and over 150 scenes. Then, with Reason slaved to Live I was loading new Reason files for different sections of the set. That ended up being near-fatal because many tracks were setup to get signals from the same output from Reason. Halfway through the set 3 tracks could be running the same sound making it 3 times louder than it ought to have been. The solution I want to explore is to build several live sets that include various configurations of songs from my repertoire. Each set would be laid out not by song, but only by track and sample so that the live performance would be more creative and responsive. Also, each set would have only one associated Reason file with every instrument wired to outputs one-to-one so that there won’t be any track “bleeds”.

Anyways, the show was a great learning experience. I’m hoping to finish MetaTheories this month! (The last track is in the production phase) Afterwards I want to have a record release show and begin passing out the album to try and get more shows. Hopefully at some point next year, I will see you – the internet – out on the dance floor jamming to one of my tunes.

Ethereal Nation vs. Buenos Airwaves

So it’s 100% official and here’s the flier. You can get the full sized at flickr to spread around or use this one. The shindig is going to be September 30th 8pm @ the sycamore house (221 N. Front St., Harrisburg, PA). Cover will be $5 for charity (see the sycamore house site for more details).

Just to celebrate, here’s another new track from the upcoming album.

Sarah by etherealnation

That's right. APC 40.

I admit it, I’ve been terrible to update my blogs. Recently I’ve gotten back into it (see also Talk is Sheep & 53R1A75). So I figure the trend should extend to this blog as well. So check it out, I’m teaming up with Buenos Airwaves (music here) to do a show somewhere in Harrisburg on Thursday September 30th. I’m still waiting to figure out the specific location and time, but would love to see as many of you viewers and listeners out there to party. Also, it’s a fundraiser to send BAW all the way back to Buenos Aires and work with teens there. Finally, here’s a new track on my upcoming album (that I’ve been working on for like 3 years now, I’ll finish soon – I swear).

Fact by etherealnation

I recently found a couple of older recordings I did early on in Bloomsburg, before I embarked on completing the “Our Souls…” album in its entirety. I had them labled under the moniker “Facing Conformity” and they were two of three. The third was a live version of Axis that really didn’t meet the dynamics of these two songs. So I skipped it.

These both were recorded with Audacity and then programmed and mixed in Reason, as these tracks were created right before I got into using Ableton for arrangement and mixing. i really fell in love with the detail of the drums I used in War, but I’m already considering a remix for Hey Media. On the other hand, I really loved the vocals on Hey Media and I would like to re-record them because of some timing issues. I’m also thinking I want to add the War vocals back in as well.

That should be enough commentary from me. Please enjoy!

xoxo

Recently started on a third track of my new upcoming project that is tentatively titled “Meta Theories.” I’m slating release for next fall, but this is already shaping up to be a really busy year, so it may not come out for another year or so. But so far, the first three tracks will no doubt blow your mind as they have utterly destroyed mine.

So onto a big acoustic jam, furniture refinishing, and fodue FONDUE (i have ish). Enjoy!

Lee

• http://www.myspace.com/etherealnation
• http://www.virb.com/etherealnation
• http://www.sellaband.com/etherealnation
• http://www.garageband.com/etherealnation

You can also add me as a favorite on the iLike Facebook app. So if you like me, and/or you like my music. Please take the time to show your support for my music!

kthx!

http://fairtilizer.com/tracks/2113

tHANKS!

my apologies at being aways for so long. lots of new developments going on though.

if you visit my site and ever get really bored (which is really easy since i don’t update as much as i should), you may have noticed a neat little page to the right called “yelp.” yelp is a fun little “web2.0″ site where people congregate and share reviews of local commercial venues. i usually like to write a few paragraphs here and there when i go out about town. well, apparently the people at yelp like me so much i was selected to be an elite yelper! so check it out – my yelp site

BUT the REALLY BIG NEWS is that i’ve released two brand spanking new songs on the ethereal nation myspace site. The two tracks are:

1. C-Murder… Out (featuring Max Power aka DJ Scratch & Sniff aka DJ Shake & Bake III esq.) from the upcoming album “Catch Phrases of the Venerable Mr. Clinton Edward Creasy”
2. 58 W. Field St. (lessthanthree remix) from the upcoming EP “The Monument and the Cornerstone”

One of my goals this week is to slap together some cover art for The Monument and the Cornerstone EP and release those two projects in full. Crossing the fingers. Come to think of it, Catch Phrases already has album art, so who knows?

Keep it clean, Keeps it real

rlee