A Live PA is someone who composes and plays out live electronic music at raves, clubs or smaller more intimate parties. Its a term that can used to describe many methods of performance outside of DJing.

There are many different ways of performing as a Live PA. There is endless amounts of gear (sampler, synth, drum machine, sequencer, effects and even normal instruments!) you can assemble and endless possibilties of how you can wire it all together, it comes down to taste. A big part of Live PAing is making do with non ideal conditions where things don't work out and you have to adapt to the machines not working as they should and to the crowd not reacting they way you imagined when practising your set. Sometimes at bigger parties the person is completely faking it and a CD is playing and they just bob around mysteriuosly turning knobs on samplers and drum machines that are not plugged in.

One type of music that is very condusive to creating live is Techno and the easiest of all Acid Techno, these two will rarely be faked because it's not to hard to do and the people who make it are more purists and less likely to cheat. Acid is made with Roland 808 and 909 drum machines as well Rolands 101, 202 and 303. Techno is normally made with 808 or 909s but the rest of the gear is comprised of random synths,effects,drum machines and samplers.

Creating ambient music live is completely random and up to the composer. When it comes to creating a breakbeat like hip hop, breaks, jungle or drum and bass the odds are the beats have been made (it's almost impossible otherwise) before hand and most of the work live will be done on the effects and mixing desk bringing sounds in and out and tweaking them, this is kinda cheating but not really because its still hard and there is no real alternative. Making beats that make you shake your ass takes time.

Live PAing is hard because you're after and/or before a DJ but you need much more time to prepare, time which is usally not there. Live PAing is no soundcheck on a beach in the dark or in a noisy pulsing club trying not to piss off the DJ who is spinning while you try and get ready.

The process of putting on a quality techno live PA is a very difficult skill to master. Typically the artist does not have a microphone or a guitar with which to act flamboyantly, and he/she/they subsequently has/have a problem with stage presence and artistic integrity.

There are varied effective ways to overcome this. You may want to use a combination of them. Keep in mind that none of these can really substitute for rocking the party til the sun comes up. Or until it goes down if you're playing at a day party. You know, like The Advent. (He just stands behind his equipment, plays his music and smokes cigarettes in case you were wondering)

Eye candy - Underworld and Tool (yeah, they're not a techno group, but they stand still on stage) both have their own specific "look": Underworld with the animated stylings of Tomato, and Tool from their members that used to work in the special effect industry. If you distract the audience with enough pretty pictures, they will not be bothered by you standing still. Alternatively, have a pretty girl sing along. It works for BT.

Costumes and props - If you've never seen the Orbital minipop, here's a little description. It is a black square, with two pairs of white dots bouncing around. If you've never seen Orbital live, here's why that's important. Orbital are mostly invisible during their live performances. They have pretty pictures and lights all over the place to distract the audience, but the stage is kept dark. This gives them a problem with vision, so they constructed headsets with tiny flashlights. (They also have a row of little cows on their mixing board.) Underground Resistance, Scan 7, and Ultradyne and errr Slipknot but I'll bet they got the idea from UR, yeah put on anonymous shows with gas masks, ski masks, bandanas covering faces, and scary makeup. Dopplereffekt don scientist uniforms. Even standing still looks cool when you're dressed up like a sound terrorist.

Play a weird instrument - Aaron Spectre looks like your average nerdy goth kid, but he plays a hammered dulcimer on stage. How many people play drum and bass and darkwave with a hammered dulcimer on stage?

Play an instrument, and act silly - Underworld's Karl Hyde plays guitar. He uses it to make noises and to control drum machines which in turn make noises. He also dances around like a nutter when he's not playing, accepting snow globes from dirtylist members and wearing them like a hat for a while before putting them on top of his equipment rack.

Don't drop heavy things on the audience because you drank too much - The Crystal Method did this once. I've avoided them since. However, the existence of Genitorturers fans may prove me wrong.

Play live - No tapes. No CDs. No Minidiscs. No DAT. Unless you're using them for sample playback or recording, they are against the rules.