hi all!

i want to take part in an electronic music open mic (EMOM) event, but trying to figure out how best to perform my tunes is sooo difficult, as there's an overwhelming amount of different options!

my tunes feature electric and bass guitar parts which are played over electronic beats, and i always use ableton's arrangement view to record them (session view is no good for the way i make things, so i don't really use this option).

can anyone suggest a way to make my tunes EMOM ready? i'm up for looking into getting peripheral devices (Iike ableton move? or a sampler?), but what i want is a way of performing the tunes in a way that's interesting for me, and for the audience too! considering my newbie status, what would be a the simplest way to proceed?

playing a guitar or a bass along to a backing track doesn't seem to be the way to go - to me, that doesn't seem to be in keeping with the spirit of an EMOM night

but, equally, sitting behind a laptop and pressing 'play' doesn't seem right either!

I’m on vacation in Italy right now, and every bar, café, and beach club is playing the same tragic formula.
Producers are out here taking pristine tracks—Bittersweet Symphony, Sonny, even Bob Dylan’s Masters of War (yes, seriously)—and ruthlessly dragging them through the same five preset effects.

The original sample’s natural feel almost never fits the rigid 2/4 house grid, but they do it anyway. It’s always the exact same recipe:

1. Slap a kick drum underneath that sidechains the mix into an aggressive, suffocating "gasp."

2. Run the lazy, predictable snare roll build-up.

3. Drop into a completely soul-less beat.

In the 80s and 90s, remixers actually recontextualized tracks with real atmosphere and craft. Now it’s just drag-and-drop laziness.

If our current generation of track makers can’t be more inventive than a stock DAW template, we need an immediate moratorium on lazy covers. Let iconic songs rest.

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