Evolutions

As far as we know, we’re the only band writing real music live on stage. There are a few bands creating experimental stuff on stage, but it sounds obviously like an experiment rather than finished music. Our fans say how amazed they are the first time they see us and realise that we are actually creating this music live as we play it, because before they look it sounds just like a CD.

The reason that this is such a rare phenomenon is that it takes 3 skill-sets which are usually mutually-exclusive. The first skill set is being able to improvise really well. Of course there are lots of jazz musicians who can do this to a set of standard chords that they have learned before-hand, and various other musical genres include some degree of improvisation over pre-prepared structures.

Another necessary skill-set is to have a really good musical “ear” so that one can hear which chord (not just key) the music is moving through at this instant, and be able to improvise using that chord and style and mood instantly. It is usually only classical musicians who have been trained to be able to hear this precisely, but they almost always are unable to create at all due to the training and the intensity of the requirement to fit in with accepted views, absolutely necessary for being accepted into the classical “world”.

The 3rd skill-set is being able to program a whole recording-studio . . . beats, synth sounds, samples, effects, mix-down etc. Of course, there are a lot of people in the world who can do this, but almost none who can do it so quickly and intuitively that they get it right in real-time. Synth programming usually takes hours but for what we do, and is usually based on trial-and-error, but for Evolutions one has to do that job perfectly, in real-time, with no mistakes. So Chris really is creating and programming new synthesisers, beats, samples, effects as well as mixing everything, all in real-time, making everything work well instantly, no trial-and-error, just great results immediately!

Not only is each of these particular skills relatively rare, the combination of all 3 skill-sets is almost unheard of, especially in todays over-specialised world. Evolutions doesn’t pre-prepare musical structures at all, so this is not like jazz where the chords are written down and just the choice of notes within those chords is made in real-time, Evolutions is actually writing every aspect of the music in real-time, including the structure.

The name Evolutions was chosen because that’s how our music works. Chris might start with a simple beat, then Luisa might create some original vocals over that, and Chris might play some gentle string sounds whih fit the exact chords of the vocals Luisa has just created, and record the strings as they are played on keyboard. That in turn might suggest a different beat, which Chris programs in real time and mixes into the existing music. The the emotional evolution of the piece being created might need a bass-line, so Chris quickly selects and programs a bass sound and plays the bass-line on keyboard recording it as it loops. Then it might be time for a solo, so Chris quickly makes suitable changes to the beats and maybe modifys the programming of the existing sounds, picks up the violin and plays a solo. And so on . . . the music evolves over time.

Philosophically this can be said to be the difference between “fine art” and “graphic design”. Graphic design is actually a process, fundamentally speaking, where something is first created in the mind then manifested into reality. The Fine Art process works in a very different way, and could be defined as an evolution resulting in something which could NOT have been created in the mind beforehand. The Fine-art evolution is a result of feed-back from what’s been done already. So Evolutions is not writing a piece of music, then playing it. The writing is done in response to the playing itself, and the changing mood of the audience every instant etc. and there is nothing which could be predicted before the music starts, even to the two people creating it

For our many fans, the result that they tell us how much they appreciate is that the energy projected by real-time evolutionary creation is unlike anything possible when replaying existing material. Creation and the replaying of existing things, feels very different, and this is what Evolutions projects to the audience as they create real music live.

It must be stressed that so far “Evolutions featuring Luisa” is playing to a general hotel audience, so this is not experimental music played to an exclusive set of fans who want some particular kind of experimental wierdness, this is music which a random hotel audience really love and ask if they can buy the CD it’s being played from, until they get close and see that we’re actually creating this music live!!! Then they want a CD even more