Beats and Things

All those questions

Ander — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 10:30:10 +0000

There is an interview about me and my controller now on youtube, courtesy of the Ableton User Group Zurich aka modul8tor. I give some insight into how my setup works and what I think is important when performing EDM live. The viedo is the first one in a new series of features, really looking forward to hear more of that and have some discussion on the stuff that we do.

UPDATE: Please note that the music played right at the beginning of the interview is mainly Pettinato’s and not mine, that kind of slipped me when I reviewed the video. Here is the link to the soundcloud track.

Next audioasyl session will be solo

Ander — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 17:01:45 +0000

Next Friday (aka not tomorrow) I will be performing solo again, to try out my new set. It made a first appearance at Cabaret last Saturday. I loved it, I hope you will like it, too. Some mellow grungyness included. As for the older sets with special guests, every one of them is now on soundcloud. Enjoy and give feedback!

P.S.: The button “Buy” is a bit misleading in the soundcloud player below, it actually links to flattr.com. So go on and buy us a … no, gin and tonic, please.

Live on air this friday: Dada and Ander

Ander — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 17:22:47 +0000

This month’s show on audioasyl.net will feature yet another guest, yet another one I am especially looking forward to. Dada has a background as a graduated piano player and music producer with a special interest in experimental and melodic minimalistic dancemusic. He is working strictly with a hardware-setup, which will be a nice contrast to my digital rig. He is an important activist in the Swiss electronic Jam-Scene, organising smaller and bigger Jam- Sessions in Zurichs most important Clubs. Also an active producer, Dada has released tracks on labels such as Nice Try Records and lala Music. Do check out his soundcloud page.

As a live act, Dada always fascinates me with his sets, wandering on that driving border between the well-received and the uh-am-I-ready-for-this. Never too shy to challenge his audience, but always present and always ready to get you lost in music.

Pettinato and Ander front to front

Ander — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 17:52:04 +0000

On Friday I will have yet another very special guest in my show on audioasyl.net: Pettinato, half of my favorite italian boy band Nobody Nose, will join me for some fun four to the floor bashing. Pettinato is a master of dropping the most sumptuous bassline right there where you would have wished but never expected it. Dedicated to the funky tidbits in modern electronic dance music, his sound will get you going along in no time. But actually, what I like best about him is his musical humor. Listen and be surprised!

Ander overseas

Ander — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:42:54 +0000

Wohooo, what a nice surprise in my inbox: some weeks ago I participated in the open call for submissions of the In/Out Festival, and guess what, I’m in. Therefore I will be playing in the Knitting Factory in New York this November. The festival is from the 11th to the 13th, do not miss it if you are in the area. I am absolutely exhilarated to play there and meet some fellow tinkerers.

Sarna joining the fun

Ander — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:15:26 +0000

And yet another special guest. With pleasure I can now tell you that Sarna, the founder of Nice Try Records, will be joining me on Friday for a live show, jam and discobash on audioasyl.net. Sarna is not only the owner of the label, but also performing on his own as a DJ and, since recently, live performer. He will be bringing the odd drum machine, some dozens of loops and the groovy mindset that stands behind the truly distinguished release history of Nice Try Records. I really like the last release from Dollar Mambo. Techno without the need to jump into anybody’s face. I wish you all a very nice warmup into the weekend.

Special guest: Slumberjack

Ander — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 14:58:05 +0000

Tomorrow I will have a special guest on my show. We will do some live playing and jamming. Slumberjack from the crates has just recently opened his musical heart towards live performance (a development I am very fond of, especially considering that his DJ skills are already tantalizing). He has recently released a gorgeous podcast on input selector and is releasing music under his own label. His latest development is pitapat, a live duo together with fellow artist Emil Teiger. Tune in tomorrow at audioasyl.net and enjoy our chaotic orchestration / orchestrated chaos.

Grundton at Hive: I like.

Ander — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 15:23:09 +0000

Great night out at Grundton Live! in Hive club the weekend before the big parade. Really crowded, really nice audience, lot’s of fun behind the decks. Here is my liveset from that night, enjoy.

UPDATE: There is now also a video, shot by modul8tor, a Zurich based Ableton-aficionado. He also wrote some thoughts about my performance into the video description, very interesting.

Uptown Tike

Ander — Fri, 13 May 2011 21:38:16 +0000

UPDATE: Available now on beatport! Every purchase helps.

Proudly announcing: my first release, on Eminor Binary. I really have been looking forward to this: on the 6th of May my first track will be released. Get a preview of it on soundcloud. It will be available on beatport.com for your listening pleasure.

And now to something completely complicated

Ander — Wed, 11 May 2011 14:12:26 +0000

UPDATE: Well, M4L is great, but for live performance it is pretty much unusable if you want to use more than 4-5 M4L effects in your setup. An empty M4L device, be it MIDI or audio, uses about 5% of a single CPU. M4L runs inside the Live thread and consumes memory that would otherwise be available for Live. Moreover, it seems to be completely unoptimized for multiprocessor environments. All M4L devices run on the same core. This is a huge drawback, I will not touch on M4L again until they fix this in a future update. What a shame.

Well, I am not always producing music or listening to gorgeous new tracks. Actually, quite a lot of my time I am optimizing my setup, especially my Ableton Live set. I use a rather large set (I am desperately waiting for the 64bit version of Live) and have a couple of hundreds of devices in there. Now, with the new version of Max for Live from Cycling74, I actually started to build some devices to make my life a little easier. First creation is a so called one knob filter: Turn it to the left, it’s a lowpass, turn it to the right, it’s a highpass. It comes with all kinds of parameters to twiddle with and a nice graph to show you what you are doing. Download and enjoy. By the way: They are right when they say Max for Live is the best invention since sliced bread.