Working with musical directors
Lesson time: (0min 0sec)
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This lesson is part of the course Studio to Stage: How Faithless Created Their Live Sound
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Lesson transcript:
Transitioning from Studio to Live Performance
Sometimes it's quite a daunting thing to go from the studio to live if you've not really had any experience in this area.
The Role of Musical Directors (MDs)
There are people called MDs, or musical directors, who can make that job easy for you. They can:
- Take the things you've done in the studio
- Rearrange your stems
- Help point you in the right direction on what to embellish
- Suggest live musicians who can play parts that were recorded and so forth.
Early Experiences
We started off actually using a guy who was going to be our drummer, called Andy Gangardine. He ended up getting poached by the Spice Girls, so he only came to one rehearsal.
I think he might have started programming one song because he was au fait with the MPC, and we didn't really know how to work it. We used different sequences in the studio, not an MPC.
Literally, after one rehearsal, he disappeared off with the Spice Girls. I believe he's now with Chase and Status. This is his usual show, as well as his own band, The Baes.
He's an amazing drummer and an amazing MD, very experienced, having worked with loads of bands. We thought we needed that expertise.
Assembling the Band
After Andy, we started cobbling it together ourselves. Our MD was essentially Rollo. As we went on with different tours, Andy Treacy, our drummer, also did a lot of programming and helped with MD duties.
Ultimately, Rollo, who produced the records, was a non-instrumentalist. He could really listen to everything with clear ears, which was incredibly useful.
Rehearsals with Rollo
He would come to rehearsals, and we would rehearse the songs up to a certain point. Then he'd work out the bits he liked and didn't like, which is pretty much how I've worked with him in the studio for the last 30 years.
We would sit there bickering and arguing over hi-hats and things like that. Rollo brought that dynamic to the studio, which was really, really helpful. It allowed us to reflect on our playing from both the inside and the outside almost simultaneously.
Unique Approach
I don't know many producers that would do this ? produce a record and then come back to produce a live band. This is quite an unusual situation, but you can employ MDs from the outside.
There are definitely quite a few around, and they'll be up to speed on the best ways for electronic artists, in particular, to translate studio work into the live arena.
Challenges of Electronic Music
It is always the most complex musical form. In my eyes, it's different from a band where you sit in a room and play a song that gets recorded. Electronic music just doesn't work that way.
The layering, coming back to bits of music at different times, the overdubbing, and the complexity of beats and filtering create challenges.
Live Performance Solutions
How on earth do you recreate that in the live arena? Well, obviously now we live in a world of Ableton and other methods.
With tools like Novation and Kontakt, as well as other great samplers, we can take the sounds we've created in the studio and present them in a live setting much more effectively.
About the instructor
'Sister Bliss never stopped writing music. She's an accomplished composer for film and TV, a club DJ, and an advocate for the creative industries'. Billboard One of the most successful British dance music artists of the past 25 years, Ayalah Bentovim AKA Sister Bliss is the musical force behind Faithless. Together with iconic front man Maxi Jazz and producer Rollo Armstrong, she formed Faithless: one of the most successful electronic acts of their generation, with a career spanning more than two decades that included 8 albums (3 at number 1) and six top 10 singles. To date, Faithless have sold in excess of 15 million records worldwide and have played live to millions across the world, headlining festivals, stadiums and arenas. The band have collaborated with artists such as Jazzie B, Boy George, Cat Power and Dido, never conforming and moving effortlessly across an eclectic range of genres. Over a 25-year career that took her from the underground UK club scene to sold-out arena shows and festival headline slots around the globe, Sister Bliss has become one of British dance music's longest-standing and most influential female electronic artists. She comes off the back of releasing Faithless' first studio album in ten years, the highly anticipated 'All Blessed' - Faithless' love letter to electronic music that presents them at their very best. The album reached number 6 in the charts and the singles, along with their premiere remixes, garnered extensive support across BBC Radio 1, Radio 2 and BBC 6 as well as Kiss FM and Capital. A classically trained multi-instrumentalist, she has also scored numerous TV, film and theatre productions. Credits include 2012's film Knife Fight starring Rob Lowe and directed by two-time Oscar winner Bill Guttentag, commissions for Sex & The City 2, Chasing Amy, Danny Boyle's The Beach, A Life Less Ordinary, acclaimed British film The Hide, Crossing The Line and the BAFTA-winning TV dramas Life Begins (ITV) and The Poison Tree (ITV). For theatre, Bliss has written music for The Black Album and The Emperor Jones at The National Theatre in London, as well as composing an original piece for the London Sinfonietta, which was performed at Fuse Festival, UK. She recently had a lead role in major prime time BBC1 show 'This is My Song', mentoring the contributors and producing their final recordings. She released a new collaborative album with Rollo and Dido in 2019 under the moniker 'R PLUS' - 'The Last Summer', following a jam-packed summer of festival headline DJ sets throughout the world including sets at Bestival, Exit Festival, Glastonbury, Creamfields, Ibiza and beyond. Her hugely successful weekly radio show and podcast 'Sister Bliss in Session' is syndicated to over 100 stations and 43 countries worldwide. She recently guest presented Gilles Peterson's acclaimed show on BBC 6 Music and regularly stands in for Ana Matronic on the Dance Devotion show on BBC Radio 2. She has also presented a 5-part series on Bauer Media's Scala Radio station joining the dots between classical and electronic music, which won the Bronze prize at the New York Festival Radio Awards, competing against 30 countries. She currently teaches at Tileyard Studios' Masters MA course, including modules on songwriting, production and writing to commercial brief, and mentors individual Masters students - the same hands-on knowledge she shares in Studio to Stage, breaking down exactly how Faithless turned their records into a stadium-filling live show. read more