How I prepared myself to play my first solo gig in over a year
Come down to Splendid tomorrow at 7 pm for Sound Sandwich!
If you’re subscribed to the Niche Music That Pops newsletter, then you might have read my article from a couple of editions back, featuring Elisa von Brockdorff on her new exhibition, Pixels On A Picnic (if you haven’t, you can read that article here). I mentioned in that article that I’d be playing a solo set on Sunday 23 at Splendid for Sound Sandwich, which is part of the exhibition programme. The night will also feature a performance by Elisa herself, who creates captivating electronic music in addition to being a visual artist extraordinaire.
Well, Sunday 23 is tomorrow, and while it’s rare that I get nervous anymore before playing gigs, I may have a tiny smidge more nerves than usual. Playing a solo gig always feels a lot more exposed, but this time around it’s a little more daunting because it will be my first solo gig in over a year, following an excessively long break due to having more urgent priorities, such as the last Eyes to Argus album and moving into my new home. But losing steam also meant losing a bit of confidence in the project in the midst of it.
The plan was always to regain that confidence and get back to playing live this year, so this was a Splendid opportunity (I apologise for that, please don’t unsubscribe) to optimize my approach to playing live shows. And here’s how I did that!
I Marie Kondo’ed my music
One of the most important things I’ve learnt over the years is that you need to be less precious about the things you create. Taking some time away from my music gave me a great opportunity to revisit the tracks I had written and make a call on what songs still felt special and which ones didn’t. This can, ironically enough, be a harder task when you’re playing your material over and over because it becomes another form of habituation.
Once I’d decided what tracks I was still happy with, a two-part process followed:
Relearning the songs – I will say this: I am so glad I had recordings of the tracks available, or this would have been so much more arduous. I cannot stress this enough – record your ideas. Your brain cannot retain everything. At least, mine can’t!
Making little improvements – I remember at some point (either last year or the year before that), I had become a bit obsessed with the idea that my songwriting had to be ‘better’. And the result was that I was making little tweaks to everything, and this only made everything sound more forced than before. When I started to revisit these songs a couple of months back, it thankfully didn’t take too long to realize that the songs felt a lot more natural the way I’d originally written them, which is a nice revelation of sorts. I did make a few changes – I improved some beats, and added a few melodies – but I leaned into what felt right rather than what felt like “good songwriting on paper”.
Here’s a snippet of an older track that I’ve played at most of my shows and will be making a return tomorrow:
I wrote some new music!
This was important to me, not because I was concerned that anyone was going to call me out for only playing older music (as if anyone is going to recognise any of it haha) but because I didn’t want to simply pick up where I left off without saying anything new.
Writing new music was a challenge last year, which I can again attribute to being busy, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. In reality, similar to my note above, I was getting stuck in my head trying to write songs that were ‘different enough’ or ‘good enough’. Once I got in the swing of things, it became a lot easier to worry less about whether something was objectively good and care more about whether something felt good. And that’s a big difference!
A great quote came out of a recent interview with John Patitucci on the Janek Gwizdala Podcast – “The more you get outside yourself, the better you play.” This really resonates with how I found the process of writing new music in recent months, as well as revisiting my older music.
I cared less about sounds, and more about Sound
If you’ve seen me live before, then you know I have a lot of pedals. I have too many pedals. I am a big unapologetic pedal nerd.
I obviously don’t think there’s anything wrong with this, but it has led me to think in the past that a good way to create differentiation in my music is to use a lot of different sounds, often with a totally different preset of sounds per song. And the more I got ready for this gig, the less I resonated with that idea. It now feels a lot more liberating to use fewer sounds, and have those sounds serve the songwriting rather than vice versa. It conveniently also makes for less button mashing. But let’s be honest…I still do plenty of that.
And you’d think this would mean I’d remove some pedals off my boards as a result, but no. I am using more pedals than ever. But there is a method to the madness, because (and I am excited about this) I have now reconfigured my pedalboard setup to be stereo for the first time, and this, in theory, means that my sound will have more spatial depth, width, and movement than ever – and all without ever having to drag an amp with me to a gig! I have to thank Luke Galea from Attic Audio for his help and endless patience in helping me make this happen.
I bought a drum throne
This is the part where you might start scratching your head, but it solved a very real problem for me. One of the hardest things to figure out in my live set-up has been, weirdly enough, what to do with myself when performing.
I like to get close to my pedals and I often change things by hand. This means standing isn’t ideal. Another option has been to use a table, similar to an electronic set-up, but there are two points of complication here – you can’t always source a table, and I don’t always want to use my hands to press buttons, especially when looping, as it locks me in to always having to start with a drum beat. The most obvious option, and the one that’s always been my preference, is sitting down, but as with tables, you can’t always source a seat that’s quite the right height. My solution around this so far has been to simply perform while sitting on the ground and getting up as needed, but you probably don’t need me to tell you why this is pretty awkward.
Getting a drum throne that’s height-adjustable and portable seems pretty obvious now, but it wasn’t for years! Why would I consider a drum throne when I’m not a drummer? Those are for drummers! And it ended up being an absolute game-changer in terms of being able to perform comfortably.
Sound Sandwich is happening tomorrow at Splendid in Valletta. Doors are open at 7 pm, and we’re kicking things off at 8 pm sharp. Not only is it free entry, but we’ll have free wine and lollipops. What more could you ask for?
Needless to say, if you’re free, it would be great to see you there!
If you can’t make it, the exhibition is still certainly worth a visit. Pixels On A Picnic is running until February 27th at Splendid, and Elisa will be giving an informal talk about the works and her process on Tuesday 25th February (RSVP here).
Pixels On A Picnic is curated by Melanie Erixon for Art Sweven.