MUTEK 2007 Report

From May 30 to June 3, Montreal once again played host to the MUTEK festival. MUTEK is an international event that celebrates contemporary and experimental electronic music and digital creativity.

In addition to showcasing a number of DJs, producers and performers at venues throughout Montreal, MUTEK features a professional component called Digisection. Digisection offers workshops and panels covering a variety of topics for budding and established artists. Ableton was proud to participate in Digisection with two workshops and a special panel.

The workshops, "Music Production with Ableton Live" and "Music Performance with Ableton Live," were hosted by Matt Moldover, a New York-based composer and performer. Discussion topics at the production workshop included Live's basic workflow, creating songs quickly from scratch, advanced sound design tricks and (as always) innumerable feature requests. Matt pulled out all the stops for the performance workshop, presenting his heavily modified Novation MIDI controller, doling out heaps of practical advice for budding electronic musicians looking to perform on stage.

Performance was also the focus of the Ableton panel, titled "Computer-Aided Music Performance." Moderated by Ableton Public Media Coordinator David Cross, the panel featured artists Deadbeat, Kode9, Mateo Murphy, Monolake and Pheek. The topics covered included technical setups, audience perceptions, improvisation, cheating and new technologies.

Additional pictures from the MUTEK festival are viewable here: http://www.mutek.ca/photos.php?lang=en