On 3/24/2022, I was asked to perform a 45 minute solo set as an opening act for a friend of mine's band at an event to be held 8 days later. I had always wanted to turn Harmonic Illusion into a live act, but never had the efficient equipment or any real reason to make it a reality, but as soon as I was asked to play for this, I knew that I had to take the opportunity. In the span of a day, I had the entire setlist planned out.

One of the most important things discovered in the planning stage was figuring out how to actually play this music live. I took tons of inspiration from the current live vaporwave acts, such as Death's Dynamic Shroud in particular. To set myself apart from the rest of the scene, as well as be able to utilize the musical skill that I possess, I knew that I wanted to use a keyboard as one of the main elements of the performance. This would be taking the place of certain samples in the music, such as synth leads and other melodic curiosities.

The biggest issue with performing this material live was being able to play the samples in real-time as I did not own a hardware sampler at this time, so I knew I had to come up with a temporary solution until I was able to get a hardware sampler. I have an iPad Pro, so I started looking into apps that I would be able to load my samples into, and I managed to find one for free. It had a slight latency issue, so I was always having to anticipate what I was doing, but it's the best that I could find in such a short amount of time. (For this reason, please excuse any rough edges in the performance.) I had exported each of the tracks into distinct sections so that I could still have something to do even when I wasn't playing keyboard; that is, cueing each section of the song in real-time. With that, I could also be able to change the arrangement of each piece as I desired in real-time.

I also really wanted to add something to each piece that wasn't on the original recording just to make the live experience worthwhile in comparison to just listening to any Harmonic Illusion record. You will hear that this is achieved through certain extended improvisations, and in some cases, completely new sections in songs. In addition to a nice blend of pieces from both "As (Potentially) Seen On TV" and "Advanced Dream Experience", there are three brand new interludes.

In the words of one concertgoer, this performance was described as a "one-man prog symphony", and I couldn't agree more. Even though this is technically sequenced as a compilation of some of my greatest hits, it does feel like it was meant to be a cohesive work. If anyone reading this has been picking up on the hidden concepts within my recent works, this sequencing may act as an alternate timeline to that story.

Lastly, onto the live recording itself. While I have made certain edits and overdubs to this recording, the performance remains largely unchanged. Any post-production additions have been made purely to help better represent my vision of the live show and to help repair some of the bigger mistakes made during performing. The final result still isn't a perfect performance, but that's the beauty of a live show, and it's definitely a bit of an improvement from the raw audio. I hope you'll enjoy this journey into the live experience of Harmonic Illusion.


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Recorded live on 4/1/2022
Recorded through a Tascam DR-40 4-Channel Handheld Recorder

The gear that was used for this performance:
-Nord Stage 3 Keyboard
-iPad Pro (w/ sampler app)
-Yamaha MG10 Mixer
-Roland KC-550 Keyboard Amplifier
-EarthQuaker Devices Organizer
-EarthQuaker Devices Rainbow Machine
-Malekko Charlie Foxtrot
-Catalinbread Csidman


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