Once I’ve got my basic production done and I’m ready to try out a new beat in a performance situation, I’ll first lay out a basic arrangement. This helps me figure out what I might want to do with the piece. Then I’ll print a few stems from the arrangement.
In the following example, I’ve built a performance from three stem mixes:
The first set of clips (Work Song) is drums and bass. The three clips are loops from different parts of the arrangement I’ve laid out.
The second track contains one clip containing a two bar loop of a keyboard stab. Extremely simple, but very effective. I can do a lot by applying effects to a lone stab.
The third track is four loops from the blues song I’ve sampled for this song. Again, these four clips are derived from one audio file – the stem of this track that I printed at the beginning of this process.
With filters, effects and some creative clip launching, I can create a pretty interactive performance from these simple clips.
