As I mentioned in my last post, The Quahog Stalker was really written for recording. But after a little thought, I worked out that it could be done reasonably effectively just using a couple of loopers and some fancy footwork.
When I play things live I generally prefer to do the whole thing live, using loopers rather than backing tracks. So if I did play the piece live like this I would have to leave out the guitar effects. This is not a huge loss, people tend to be more forgiving in a live setting and you can add visual drama which you can’t on a recording.
However, I was asked to perform it live on a quadraphonic rig and so thought how I could best make use of the equipment and also provide a more ‘complete’ version live. I settled for a fairly simple system which, nevertheless, should be quite effective. The ‘footsteps’ can be panned to the back of the hall to increase the tension as can a lot of the spooky guitar effects, keeping the violin in the front.
Even this simple addition increases the amount of equipment I’ll need to have on-stage. As well as my full pedalboard plus two loopers & amplifier, I’ll also need my MIDI pedalboard to control Ableton on the laptop and the laptop audio interface – and lots of leads.
I think it will work well though.
In addition to this piece I will also be performing a piece for solo viola and electronics, which was actually written for quadraphonic, by Sonia Paço-Roccia. For this I will use the acoustic 5 string violin with a pickup … yes, more equipment to lug around !
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