We’ve been hearing from a lot of DJTT readers who have seen some of Ean’s AIRA performance videos on his Facebook page and been asking us about the gear and how/why someone would want to use it in a production or DJ setup. For a fun Friday article, we’ve rounded up five performances with Roland AIRA gear that stand out and show off some of the coolest possibilities. Read on to watch them all!
KiNK on Roland TR-8
If you haven’t subscribed to KiNK’s fascinating YouTube channel already, I highly recommend going there right now and checking out some of his studio videos which include Aira performances. This video with just the TR-8 drum machine shows off the versatility of what must be the most popular AIRA model. The performance is super dynamic – with even a bit of footwork-style rhythms in there.
Oskar Szafraniec: Full Hour-Long Live Set
Ok, so tooling around on these machines and building interesting moments out of them is one thing – but what about a full hour-long set? This video from Oskar Szafraniec shows how a full AIRA setup (centered around the MX-1 performance mixer) can be a complete rig if you know it like the back of your hand. Worth nothing this isn’t an “on-the-fly” performance – it’s clearly well practiced and individual songs/parts are being played. He’s also using elements in Ableton Live 9 – but that’s not as visible in this video.
Tech49 – Live Dubstep
We first spotted this performance routine last summer and were blown away – not only because of the tools used, but because Tech49 was crafting some incredible throwback “real” dubstep – the original liquid sound, not the modernized “brostep”. It’s a great jam session – and especially when using the TB-3 bass synth, it’s all too easy to switch to an acid-sounding bassline – but he avoided it entirely. Other gear used in the video includes a GAIA SH-01 and a SP-404 Sampler.
Sluwe Vos and David Ahlund Collaborative AIRA setup
One of the appeals to having MIDI-synced hardware setups has always been that it’s very easy to keep all of your gear in time, even if there’s more than one person using different elements of the setup. This duo on the TR-8, TB-3, and System-1 synth do a good job of staying together and building a collaborative performance.
Jacob Waters AIRA Test Drive
The complete AIRA lineup also makes an appearance in this video – but what makes it especially interesting is the way in which Jacob has done some of the routing. He writes in his video description:
“I am running the audio output of the TB-3 to the input of the VT-3 to create a drone sound. Then I chop it up with side chaining in the MX-1.”
Bonus: Ean’s Most Recent AIRA Jam
Finally we’ll throw in one more bonus video – one of the recent Aira Performance videos from Ean’s Facebook that inspired this roundup in the first place!
This week’s live studio session captured a nice progressive number with a driving techno rhythm in one un-edited take. I will be uploading a free, full length version shortly, so make sure you are subscribed to my page!
Posted by Ean Golden on Friday, June 26, 2015
Have you seen any of Roland’s AIRA line being used impressively? Share it with us in the comments below!
