On the 9th of April I performed my first ever Live set in the Loop cafe in south Tottenham. The venue is a small cafe and restaurant that occasionally hosts live music events. From experimental electronic music to hiphop workshops. The music I performed in the event was mainly Down Tempo electronic music, a quite mellow but rhythmic type of electronic music that suited the atmosphere perfectly. My set-up consisted of an Elektron Octatrack as the brains, a Monologue XD as my lead synth and a Volca Beats that was in charge of most of my drums during the performance. For the performance I triggered samples from the Octatrack and programmed my own sequence in the XD and the Volca. To layer up things I creatively sampled through the Octatrack, allowing me to record and loop a sequence from the XD and then change the parameters of the synth to layer on top of what was recorded. Most of the performance was improvised as I programmed the sequence with random notes and changed the parameters on the spot. The performance got me in an extremely detailed listening state, where I had to be in focus at all times and figure out the best sonic resources I needed to develop the performance. Whilst improving, I entered a smooth state of hypnosis created by the rhythms, my internal clock and brain felt every beat carefully and managed to experience my music in a vivid and emotional way. This for me was extremely unusual, as I had not experience this since I started playing instruments when I was ten years old. As this performance allowed me to explore sound design in the moment, it was a new performative feature I’ve never experienced before.

https://youtube.com/shorts/0zQ2j_0c-c8?feature=share

For my creative piece, I’ve felt a bit lost in what direction to take. Through out the year I have explored multiple mediums and enjoyed working in each, so my indecision problem comes from me liking everything and wanting to the everything at the same time. Instead of like in other occasion where I lack inspiration. One of my ideas for the creative piece is doing a performance similar to the one in the Loop Cafe, just that I would like to experiment with more complicated themes that would not be as adequate for that cafe. Virtuosity is a theme that I have come across frequently in my practice and in self reflection I would have to admit that I had never achieved it. For my piece I will like to use my same set up but take its capabilities to non-conventional ways and exploit its resource.