Note To Self…

TURN OFF THE LOOP SWITCH BEFORE STARTING TO RECORD A LIVE SET!

I cannot upload last night’s set at Jam Renaissance because I left the Loop Switch on and that means the entire hour’s set tried to record itself into 8 bars of the Arrange View and that means I didn’t record the set.

Woops.

I will record a short studio session instead and put that up later this week.

The Gig.

A big thank you to everyone who came down to Jam Renaissance last night. Special thanks to Rafael Chicano and Rennie Foster for their continuing support of me, my live show and my music.

Jam is a very cool space and it was refreshing to play a set not really aimed at getting people to dance. I was able to experiment with a new live set up and new template mappings. I also tried some live looping and live re-sampling and I am pleased with the results.

Technical Issues.

My controller is malfunctioning so I have had to re-work my MIDI maps to compensate for dead sliders and loose knobs and I have also reworked some of my effect routes so at some points in the set I did get a bit lost and ended up turning up that which should have been turned down and vice-versa.

I usually use the same template for every live set but rather than using a “clean” template every time I use the template of the previous live set I performed and recorded. Occasionally this means there are some artifacts from the prior live set or rehearsals that can cause some technical issues on the night.

In this case, for some reason, somewhere in rehearsal, I must have switched on the loop function to audition some audio before rendering it to HD then I forgot to do a very simple thing like setting it back to OFF.

When I sat down today to upload the live set I found that I had only recorded 8 bars of the intro and then nothing.

So I have made this quick checklist that I will use from now on to make sure that my set will be recorded and I will have some content to upload the next day as promised!

At end of Sound Check.

In Arrange View:

CLICK ON ANY TRACK

SELECT ALL > DELETE (This will erase any unwanted automation/clips that may have been accidentally recorded.)

LOOP SWITCH > OFF

STOP BUTTON > DOUBLE CLICK GLOBAL STOP BUTTON (This will set the track to play from 0:00:000.)

Immediately BEFORE starting show.

In Scene View:

STOP CLIPS (This stops any/all undesired clips from playing when you hit the Global Play or a Clip Launch Button.)

SWEEP ALL CONTROLS THROUGH 0-127 AND SET BUTTONS/FADERS TO DESIRED START POSiTIONS (When Takeover Mode is set to “pick-up” this ensures that your controls have “picked up” the positions of the device controls they are mapped to and are now ready for immediate response from the controller.)

STOP BUTTON > DOUBLE CLICK GLOBAL STOP BUTTON (This will set Live to play/record from 0:00:000.)

ARM > GLOBAL RECORD (This will not start playback it sets Live to start recording from when you launch the first clip/scene.)

LAUNCH FIRST CLIP/SCENE

KICK ASS, MELT SOME MINDS, HAVE SOME FUN

At the end of the show.

STOP BUTTON > CLICK GLOBAL STOP BUTTON.

SAVE (⌘S); SAVE (⌘S); SAVE (⌘S) (Save, save save save – This will save your set.)

MAKE SURE YOU SAVE!

EXIT LIVE.

SHUT DOWN

PACK UP

MINGLE.

Latest Live Set Recorded at Xex up for Download.

Shane Berry Live at Xex can be downloaded here.

Big thanks to everyone who came out to Xex and enjoyed the set.

While being an interesting space overall Xex is not the best venue volume wise. Halfway through the set I had to shave off 30% of the bass and halve the volume (on the house system) to keep the cops and neighbours at bay which changed the energy on the dancefloor immensely.

It’s part and parcel of performing in Tokyo, a city with one of the highest population densities in the world – 5655 people per km² – and it even happened to me at Womb of all places.

I had prepared for a slightly straighter and mellow (for me) set anyway so it all worked out in the end and this is probably the least technical set I have played from a live point of view. Performance wise I am not thrilled with some of the transitions, keys are wonky at times and it feels very cut and paste, although in real time it was sounding pretty good I must admit.

Line Kernel’s exclusive VJ performance added an extra dimension and colour to the set and I hope to continue collaborating with him into the near future.

D1 Recordings – Evening Glow of a River – Baiyon (Featuring Shane Berry)

My good friend the super talented producer and Kyoto based artist Baiyon has his new 12″ release out on D1 recordings.

We worked on the track Lupe together and as always it was fun and inspiring.

Check it out and enjoy!

Downloads Update

A big thanks to everyone who came and downloaded the latest set from the site. So much positive feedback makes all the hard work worth it.

Shane Berry Live at Soundbar+

The set I played at Soundbar+ on Friday the 05/03 is available for download here. It has been slightly edited for levels and some timing issues – enjoy!

In the end I had a great time as always, a big thanks to all those who came out, danced and enjoyed the show.

The perfectionist in me though is not too happy with the performance and what follows is a break down of my experience of the set, if you are interested.

Performance

First of all it was very difficult for me to take over from the Drum ‘n Bass/Live MC set before me. To drop from 160+BPM highly energised into 128 BPM deeply groovy is a massive energy shift and I feel I was just not on game enough to pull off the transition smoothly. It was one of those nights where my timing was off by milliseconds and it compounded this feeling of slippage on my side of the performance and chipped away at my overall confidence.

Second of all, the sound check was fantastically loud but when I got on to play (with the levels I had set and finalised) it was 2/3rds of the volume and the level dip was obvious enough to have the promoter come up to me to see what was going on.

I cannot turn up the volume though my system, it is why I go and do a sound check, I am the rare artist who actually attempts to adhere to the red lights and limits set by the club so I set my levels as close to the in-house guidelines and let them take up the slack and oomph.

It was only when the house master level was raised (by the promoter sneaking behind the mixing desk and pushing up the house faders) that we reached the level previously set in the sound check and then, of course, things kicked off!

The monitoring in soundbar plus is non-existent and behind the gear it was merely a wall of low end rumble not unlike standing inside a bass bin, and I have no idea how DJs mix successfully in that environment.

I only really regained feeling for the floor at about the 20 minute mark and from there was able to get into it and get the groove going.

Production

Production wise I was trying out some new compression/eq styles for this round of tracks and it didn’t seem to work very well in Soundbar at all. The sub woofer was just completely overwhelmed and the in-house system limiters must’ve dropped the audio levels to compensate, the set really didn’t have the impact I was after and from my point of view sounded awful.

DJs have a safety net in that most of the tracks they play out have been professionally mastered, so it is very clear when a sound system is at fault or something is wrong with the mixer/set-up or the track being played.

However, since I play only music I have composed and mixed I am wholly responsible for the quality of the sound and honestly sometimes I get it a little messy.

Even more annoying is that this mixing style sounds fantastic in the studio and on various non-pro systems I tried it out on – hmmm.

I appreciate everyone blaming the sound card and other factors but really my mix downs were not up to par, I always strive to push my own production skills and in this case I pushed a little to far (literally like 1.5db boosts at 50hz – what the hell was I thinking?) so it becomes a live and learn experience and all in all I am probably one of three or four people who even noticed if at all.

Also a big shout out to Nik Sliwerski (aka Motherfunker) for lending me a sound card for the evening, it was a blessing to not have to worry about my card freezing on me again.

If you have any questions or comments about my live sets fire away and I will do my best to answer them.