Beardyman

Posted on 17th February 2023

While designing his new live set-up, Beardyman got in touch with us to suggest tweaks to Infiltrator to support his live performances. While we put these requests into our Infiltrator v2.2 update, he chatted with us about his use of software and hardware in his live shows.

What are you up to right now, and what’s coming up for Beardyman?

“I’m currently working on the next iteration of my live rig and trying to get it ready in time for my next run of shows. It’s an extremely challenging task, as I’m upgrading and/or swapping out key parts of the underlying systems. By the time I’ve completed this scope of work, the rig will be unrecognisable and will be insanely powerful. I’ll be selling some of the tech being developed for it too.”

You’ve always pushed the boundaries of what’s possible with the tech. Tell us about your latest live setup, and how that’s evolved.

“So my current setup is based in Ableton Live and is basically a monstrous Ableton session. It uses some max for live devices i’ve bought and for others i’ve built myself. Where it’s going next is going to be utilising the most advanced, intuitive, user friendly, configurable and fully-featured parameter-management system ever devised. This system should be on sale by the end of the year.”

We’re stoked that you’ve been using Infiltrator, and have even added a couple of features to the latest version. How will those help you in a live scenario?

“Infiltrator is amazing! I’m going to be using it as part of the backbone of my new live rig. Aside from being an absolutely incredible all round effects solution for sound design and dynamic song transitions, it’s also got a killer feature that i’m SO happy you guys put in: the ability to send it program changes. That means that you can use just one instance of Infiltrator and have it instantly switch presets. This completely changes how I and others can use it. It means i can use it to do anything i want and never worry about the cpu hit that would be incurred with multiple copies of it running.

“Also the low latency and quality modes make it useable in a live context, in which latency and computer efficiency are always going to be key concerns. It also has some stuff i’ve not found anywhere else. The ability to change the swing factor of the grid is amazing… now having 8 macros… there’s so much to get your teeth into with Infiltrator.”

We love how spontaneous you are with your music – it’s inspiring to see in the world of electronic music, which often seems to involve a lot of editing on a computer screen. What advice would you give to the aspiring producer, wanting to bring more “liveness” to their workflow? 

“Well…. There are 2 ways to be more spontaneous with music making: plunder libraries for other people’s work that you can incorporate (presets, loops, hits, chords, arrangement templates) or build an insane live-production system that allows you to improvise in real time.

“The latter is far harder, but WAY more fun and artistically fulfilling.”

Use the links below to follow Beardyman further or find out about about his upcoming love shows.

• Instagram
• Soundcloud
• Twitter
• Patreon
• Website