A Music ‘Live Room’

For some time now, I have been considering buying a few little toys to expand my music making. Much of my personal style is electronic, and I spend a lot of time using samplers and soft synths, and I thought that a great way to widen my sound would be to pick up some musical instruments and bang, crash, pluck, shake and rattle my way into some fun sound experimenting. I’ve considered some congas, a Stylophone, an Indian thumb piano, and even a few ‘home-made’ percussion type instruments. The idea of music being a much more hands-on / live jam session is an appealing idea, and I think that the fluid and imperfect nature of my noise-creating will help me assemble tracks in a new and exciting way.

So, when I stumbled upon this video of the Live Room at Sony Computer Entertainment America, it certainly struck a chord (pun intended) with me. To have a room full of fun things that other people can come along and ‘jam’ with can inspire all kinds of happy mistakes, as well as the possibilities of a real musician getting some rhythms and melodies going. I am set on having all kinds of live sound ‘effects’ that could be useful in sound design or soundtracks for short films. Heck, who doesn’t want to listen to a banjo through a distortion pedal? Whatever shape my ‘live room’ ends up taking, it will be very free-flowing, and I will certainly borrow some ideas from the video below. Water coolers and dustbin lids? I’m pretty sure even I could ‘play’ those….

How do you enjoy making music? Are you ‘hands-on’ or a tech wizard (or both)? What kind of experiments are you conducting to create new and interesting sounds in your genre / field? Share your ideas and experiences in the comments!

by Lee Jarvis

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Tags: experimental, Live, percussion, sound design, Sound Effects