What does a music producer do at a concert?

Question

It's a doubt I have since when I started listening to electronic music. In my head, electronic music is created like this, i.e. sitting at a computer in a comfortable room. There is no real time performing, just a lot of time to spend composing and letting the computer process what you composed.

So what do electronic music producers do at a live concert? I can imagine them playing the main melody on a keyboard or a particular beat on a pad, but there are way more effects and sounds in the average song that what is possible to reproduce with just two hands.

Answer 1

On this Launchpad video you can have a simplified exemple of what can be a live performance of an electronic music artist.

As you said, on his quiet studio time, the artist can create his various stems, nice and clean ready to be played at a live show. He will also select samples (extract from other artists music).

In the live performance, like an orchestra conductor, he will start a stem when he wants. Once the stem is playing, his hands are now free, he can ad various effects (EQ, Reverbs...), starting another stem, starting a sample etc... or actually play an instrument while the background music is playing. He also can feel the audience, and decide the right moment to drop the beat.

So, like any artist, each live performance will be different from each other.