Introduction
I am a music producer with a background rooted in house and dance music. My main instrument is the piano, and over time that love of keyboard-based sounds naturally drew me towards synthesisers, drum machines, and electronic production. When there was an option to choose Performance with Electronics as a module, I saw it as a genuine opportunity to push my practice beyond the laptop and DAW setup I usually rely on and get hands-on with hardware I had only ever seen others use. I wanted to find out whether I could translate what I do in a studio context into a live, real-time performance, where decisions about timbre, texture, and dynamics had to be made in the moment rather than edited after the fact. Going into the project, I was drawn to the idea of combining drum sequencing with synthesis and processed vocals, three elements that are in a myriad of the electronic music but also what I make and listen to. My hope was to understand not just how to operate individual pieces of gear, but how they could work together as a system, responding to each other in real time.
Why Electronics? Inspiration, History, and Personal Context
I am definitely not the first person to perform with drum machines, synthesisers, and processed vocals, and understanding that tradition was important to me. The Minimoog, released in 1970, democratised synthesis by making it portable and affordable (Pinch and Trocco, 2002). Roland’s TR-808, released in 1980, gave producers a programmable drum machine whose alien sound became the backbone of house, techno, and hip-hop (Brewster and Broughton, 2006). Kraftwerk then took these tools into the concert hall and made electronic performance an actual art form. Closer to my own practice, artists like Daft Punk and Jordan Rudess demonstrated that synthesis could be both technically sophisticated and viscerally exciting live. My own attraction to synthesisers comes from the same place as my love of piano they are keyboard instruments and the interface feels intuitive. But where a piano offers one fixed set of timbres, a synthesiser offers infinite variation. As a producer I tend to dial in a patch in a DAW and leave it static. This project forced me to rethink synthesis as performance, where the manipulation of timbre and texture becomes part of the musical content itself.
Primary Research: Learning Before Touching the Gear
Before approaching the Akai MPC Live II, I watched tutorials on the MPC series (Akai Professional, 2020), gaining a working understanding of its workflow and terminology before touching the hardware as we had not looked at it in our lessons. Similarly, I studied Jordan Rudess’s instructional material on synthesis (filters, envelopes, and LFOs) before working with the Korg MicroKorg (Rudess, 2015). I view these as primary research in the sense that they are seen first hand from practitioners, not theoretical overviews. I also experimented by routing a microphone placed inside an acoustic piano through the Roland VT-3 Voice Transformer before using it on my vocals. An experiment that gave me crucial knowledge of how the unit responds to different input timbres and levels. These all helped shape the decisions I made in my performance and ensured I had a basic understanding of the gear before implementing it into my performance.
Drum Sequencing: The Akai MPC Live II
The Akai MPC Live II handled the main groove of the performance. I triggered pads live on the Launchpad to add a performative, improvisational quality to what could otherwise have been a static sequence. Playing the pads in real time rather than simply playing back a locked pattern gave the groove a human feel, something Iyer (2002) connects to the idea of embodied timing, where small variations in when a sound lands carry emotional and cultural weight. Towards the end of the piece I applied a high-pass filter to the MPC’s output to thin the texture, removing low-end warmth and creating tension as a finisher. The decision to manipulate the sound live, rather than simply programming an effect and forgetting it, reflects a core principle of live electronic practice: as Collins (2003) argues, it is the visible, audible act of intervention that gives live electronics their distinctive character.
Drum Sequencing: The Roland TR-8 and the Question of Tempo
The Roland TR-8 handled the second drum section, and its design sits in a clear lineage: the TR-808 and TR-909 are two of the most influential drum machines ever made, shaping the sonic identity of house, techno, and hip-hop across four decades (Brewster and Broughton, 2006). Throughout the TR-8 section I adjusted the delay and reverb in real time, brought patterns in and out, and shifted the beat at which certain elements entered, all to build on momentum and structural development. The TR-8 was immediately intuitive, its layout clearly designed for live use. However, there was a significant problem. The TR-8 was displaying 130 BPM but was clearly running slightly slower, which created a subtle misalignment with the MPC. I only noticed after recording but I made the best of it and I believe the piece held together by creating this transition section, but in future I would address this by syncing both machines with a MIDI clock. Iyer (2002) notes that unintentional timing variations can sometimes produce a human-feeling groove, but it was a happy accident in the end.
Synthesis: Filters, Envelopes, and Real-Time Control on the Korg MicroKorg
The Korg MicroKorg provided the synthesiser layer, and this was where I learnt the most. My first sound started close to a pure sine wave, a clean, rounded, foundational tone. I began shaping it in real time by manipulating the cutoff filter and resonance. As Russ (2009) explains, the cutoff frequency determines the point at which the filter acts on the signal, while resonance boosts frequencies at that point, adding character and edge. Hearing these parameters respond live, rather than reading about them in a manual, gave me an understanding of subtractive synthesis I could not have had from theory alone.
I then moved to the envelope section, adjusting attack and release to shift the bass from a smooth, sustained sound to something sharper and more percussive. Before the outro I brought all settings back down, lowering the cutoff, reducing the resonance, softening the attack, to return to a deeper bass texture. This gave the bass line its own narrative shape, which is something I had never made with a synthesiser before until our module lessons. The MicroKorg’s architecture, VCO, VCF, VCA, LFO, envelope sections, maps directly onto the classic subtractive synthesis model, meaning everything I learnt here transfers to pretty much any other analogue or analogue-like synthesiser.
The Arpeggiator: Rhythm, Texture, and Layering
My second MicroKorg sound used the built-in arpeggiator, which automatically generated a rhythmic melodic pattern from the notes I held down. This added a more interlocking texture alongside the drum groove, giving the performance a busier, layered quality in the mid-section. The arpeggiator is a feature with deep roots in the modular synthesis tradition, early Moog synthesisers used step-based sequencing ideas in the late 1960s that the arpeggiator directly descends from (Pinch and Trocco, 2002). Layering a rhythmic synth line against the drum machines created the kind of interlocking texture that is central to house and techno production which is what Zeiner-Henriksen (2010) describes as the “groove-box aesthetic”, where multiple rhythmic elements lock together to produce forward momentum greater than the sum of their parts.
Vocal Processing: The Roland VT-3 Voice Transformer
The vocal element brought together live processing and post-production. I wrote a vocal part and ran it through the Roland VT-3 in real time, using the megaphone and scatter modes to alter timbre and texture. I also manipulated the reverb, formant, and pitch-shifting controls during the performance. The VT-3 is a descendant of the vocoder tradition, an instrument developed in the 1930s for speech synthesis, later adopted by artists like Kraftwerk and Daft Punk to create the mechanised vocal textures that became central to electronic music (Théberge, 1997). Using it made me aware of how processing can transform not just the sound of a voice but its emotional register. The megaphone preset pushed the voice into something exposed and scatter created this disorientated sound. Using the scatter effect was particularly interesting to me as usually that is something I would attempt to replicate on my DAW, so, doing this live was a different side to the production I’m used to. Using these effects were not random choices, they were decisions about how timbre can carry meaning.
Scrapping the First Concept
My original plan was to build a performance around a loop pedal with a live piano, layering drum machines and synths on top. I spent considerable time on it and the project was nearly finished, but it never felt right. The combination did not gel musically and, more importantly, it did not excite me. Reflection is a core part of creative development, reflective practice involves not just reviewing what you have done but being honest about whether it is working and being willing to change direction. Scrapping the first project was uncomfortable, but it was the right call. It pushed me towards a more synthesiser-led, entirely electronic setup that was a far better fit for my musical identity. The lesson here is one about creative courage and about not confusing sunk time with sunk potential.
Post-Production in Logic Pro: The Studio as an Instrument After recording
I continued developing the vocal material in Logic Pro. I applied the Remix FX plugin in latch mode, which captured real-time parameter movements as automation data and created a stutter effect that extended the performative quality of the VT-3 into the editing stage. I also used echo delay and added feedback at specific moments for dramatic effect, not as a constant texture change. The work I did in Logic felt like a natural continuation of the live performance rather than a correction of it. The principle I tried to follow was the same one that guided the live electronics: intervene when there is a musical reason to, and do it by hand so it sounds like a decision, not an automation preset.
Evaluating the Equipment: Pros, Cons, and What I Would Change
Each piece of gear brought distinct strengths and limitations. The Akai MPC Live II was expressive and powerful. The live pad performance added a human quality but its interface took significant time to learn, and I was largely self-taught from YouTube videos. The Roland TR-8 was intuitive and well-designed for live use, I also had a bunch of experience with the TR-8S from the module lessons. It’s main weakness in this project was the tempo issue described above, which points to the need for MIDI synchronisation in future setups. It also has a limited amount of presets in comparison to the TR-8S but in a good way, it forced me to be adventurous. The Korg MicroKorg was where I grew the most. Its limitation is a small keyboard and not as many modulation options as a Prologue, which I had hoped to use but which was consistently unavailable for rental. That unavailability pushed me towards the MicroKorg and the MPC, neither of which featured heavily in taught sessions and the forced exploration turned out to be enjoyable rather than frustrating. The Roland VT-3 was excellent for live vocal transformation, though its preset-based design offers less fine control than a dedicated effects processor would. Post-production in Logic partially addressed this, and the combination worked well.
Conclusion
The most important thing I have taken from this project is the understanding that synthesis is a performance practice, not just a production tool. Learning to manipulate filters, envelopes, resonance, and effects in real time to shape timbre and texture has opened up possibilities I had not previously considered. The MicroKorg, MPC Live II, TR-8, and VT-3 gave me hands-on fluency with hardware that I now want to carry into my ongoing practice. Looking ahead, I have already applied what I learnt here. In my final project house track this year I used a TR-8S and the Korg MicroKorg, and the confidence I had gained made the process considerably more fluid. It gets me excited to try out different bits of gear as well, such as the TC-Helicon, now that I have had a bit of experience with vocals processing. Additionally, I want to continue experimenting with synthesis and modulation, and to bring these instruments into my live band work, potentially stacking a Korg alongside a Nord so I can manage different timbres simultaneously, working with envelopes and filters live on stage. That prospect genuinely excites me, and that excitement is itself a measure of what this project has done for my practice.
Bibliography / Discography
Akai Professional (2020) MPC Live II: Getting Started. [Video] Available at: https://www.akaipro.com/mpc-live-ii
Bolton, G. (2010) Reflective Practice: Writing and Professional Development. 3rd edn. London: Sage.
Brewster, B. and Broughton, F. (2006) Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey. London: Headline.
Bussy, P. (2004) Kraftwerk: Man, Machine and Music. London: SAF Publishing.
Collins, N. (2003) ‘Generative music and laptop performance’, Contemporary Music Review, 22(4), pp. 67–79.
Daft Punk (1997) Homework. [Album] Virgin Records.
Iyer, V. (2002) ‘Embodied mind, situated cognition, and expressive microtiming in African-American music’, Music Perception, 19(3), pp. 387–414.
Kraftwerk (1974) Autobahn. [Album] Philips Records.
Moorefield, V. (2010) The Producer as Composer: Shaping the Sounds of Popular Music. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Pinch, T. and Trocco, F. (2002) Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Roland Corporation (2015) TR-8 Rhythm Performer: Owner’s Manual. Available at: https://static.roland.com/assets/media/pdf/TR-8_e02_W.pdf
Rudess, J. (2015) Synthesis Explained: Filters, Envelopes and LFOs. [Video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JordanRudess
Russ, M. (2009) Sound Synthesis and Sampling. 3rd edn. Oxford: Focal Press.
Théberge, P. (1997) Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music / Consuming Technology. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Zeiner-Henriksen, H.T. (2010) ‘The ‘Groove-Box’ Aesthetic and the Development of Dance Music Technology’, in Danielsen, A. (ed.) Musical Rhythm in the Age of Digital Reproduction. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 255–272.
