The BEAT is coming!
The ORKESTRA LLEKTRIQ is bringing THE BEAT to a venue near you…
Upcoming Shows:
NEW SHOW DATES coming soon!
About THE BEAT
Shaun Evans
Composer // Producer // Musical Director
THE BEAT has been envisaged and composed by Canadian-Australian musician Shaun Evans. Shaun has been a veteran behind-the-scenes agent in the music world, composing and producing stage shows for everywhere from Vegas to major Cruise Lines. He is stepping out with a bold vision for a new kind of Orchestra experience — one that will engage and excite all ages of music lover!
What Is The Beat
The Story
A trip from the Big Bang to The Internet Age
THE BEAT uses a fun and inspired mix of a whimsical musical soundtrack, narrative story, video, projection, lights and sound to take the audience on a fun journey through Time. The Beat is a primary character — giving voice to Time through the ages and playing muse to the people who create Music!
About The Story
The Story
A trip from the Big Bang to The Internet Age
THE BEAT uses a fun and inspired mix of a whimsical musical soundtrack, narrative story, video, projection, lights and sound to take the audience on a fun journey through Time. The Beat is a primary character — giving voice to Time through the ages and playing muse to the people who create Music!
Part I: Time
The Opening
We open in space where there is nothing but silence as Time waits and watches for the opportunity to reach out and interact with the bodies around it. Eventually it finds a home on a little blue planet filled with simple organisms, oceans that crest and wave and rocks and earth that move, crush and vibrate. These simple organisms evolved to become differentiated forms of life including reptiles, dinosaurs and eventually mammals. Time had an audience.
Part II: Feel The Vibration
The power of sound
Through Vibration, Time begins to find a voice and can reach out to all the creatures on Earth. It was something felt by all of the plants and creatures, through the wind, radiation of the sun, and movement of the ground and other animals around them. The creatures could feel the vibrations in their bones and through the energy of sound vibrating their ear drums. But the greatest audience of all would come through a new creature — The Great Apes!
Part III: The Apes
The birth of THE BEAT
The Apes were a new breed of creature that used the bounty of the world around them to forge tools to hunt for food and allow themselves to thrive. They eventually discovered they could master nature including fire, water and earth. Their drive to expand across the world meant they needed to communicate over vast distances — and harnessed the power of Time and Vibration to do just that. This was how The Beat was born.
Part IV: Novam Vocem
A new voice
The Beat was a hungry vehicle for Time and found a home to express itself in the Apes themselves — through their voices. Similarly the Apes fashioned musical tools from bones, reeds and sticks through which they discovered control of Pitch. By combining Pitch with a Melody the Apes could record their stories and songs into a history. As they branched out into new communities these new songs could be shared and traded and traveled the globe.
Part V: Ying / Yang
The music of contrast
The Apes continued to record and share and innovate on their stories. They realized that a single Melody alone was not enough to convey all the colour and emotion of their histories. By overlapping melodies and aligning them together they would create beautiful Harmony. Stacking melodies together produced colourful Chords that could elicit emotion. The Beat wasn’t satisfied and drove the creators to contrast with beats and space — this formed Rhythm & Syncopation. Combining all of these together generated a new response — the DANCED!
Part VI: Ideas
Enlightenment
The Beat was not a fully entrenched part of everyday life — with songs traveling the world and swirling around the ears and senses. Sharing stories, culture and ideas encouraged the people to spread far and wide. As the cultures crossed paths their songs and rhythms also intertwined — giving birth to new ways to look at the world around them.
Part VII: Legacy
Music as a tool
Some in the communities didn’t like these new ideas. They wanted to control the thoughts and stories of those around them and found a willing partner in The Beat. As The Beat craved new audiences it was easily used for these ends to encourage people to war, conquest, expansion and even slavery. But just as The Beat was used for control it could be used for inspiration — and those keen to expand thought used it to share messages of tolerance and understanding, love, life, happiness and sorrows. This was Music!
Part VIII: Joy
Expressing life’s colours
Music became like a thumbprint for each community — an identity and individual expression of their shared history and culture. Through Music the people were able to share the emotions, light and shade of everyday life with others around the world — connecting people and highlighting their shared experiences on Earth.
Part IX: The Formula
A fusion of ideas
As people continued to generate new and exciting combinations of rhythm, melody and history they developed forms of Notation to transcribe and share these songs so others could replicate their performance and emotion. In the East, musical ideas, patterns and steps were organized into vertical columns. In the West a five line stave was eventually established to record time on the horizontal axis and pitch on the vertical. These forms of Notation allowed musical ideas to be easily shared and recreated anywhere.
Part X: Neuvo Mundo
A whole new world
The people continued to expand across the land, building roads and bridges, journeying over mountains and deserts. The world seemed increasingly small — so they took to the seas in search of more. The Beat happily became a passenger on these voyages and as they discovered new lands and peoples it intermingled their rhythms, melodies and musical identities. Both African slaves and the new found Indigenous people’s cultures heavily influenced the existing musical ideas and these were of course brought home to bear new and engaging ideas.
Part XI: Exploration
Start of a connected world
Sailing ships now connected all parts of the globe just as roads and bridges connected tracts of land. A new innovation — the Printing Press gave people the ability to share and reproduce their notated ideas. Reading and writing in the now common European 5-line notation generated the ability for music to truly travel the globe.
Part XII: Can’t Keep A Good Ape Down
The age of innovation
The people continued to grow and flourish and The Beat danced between cultures, ideas and nations. The people’s hunger for more drove innovations in Science and Mathematics to control and use mechanical force. This powered wheels and gears, engines and motors. Magnetics and electrical pulses could travel through wires and The Beat happily hitched a ride. Soon even musical instruments were playing themselves through the magic and marvel of human innovation.
Part XIII: Raised On Radio
Music goes wireless
Soon the people were sending electrical currents through antennas, charging up magnetic fields that could burst through the skies. Through control of Time and Frequency these radio waves could travel over large distances. The Beat was pleased! People etched frequencies into waxed cylinders and sent them around the world. People were easily sharing and playing musical ideas everywhere. Soon music was evolving at a rapid pace — from Classical to Marches & Polkas — then Jazz to Country.
Part XIV: It’s Electric!
A whole new sound
Just when the sounds were about and music was all around a new force broke through — and it was electric! Guitars were at the vanguard of the revolution as they moved from the back of the band to the front of the stage. Keyboards weren’t to be left behind as they became Organs, Electric Pianos and eventually Synthesizers.
Part XV: Silicon Dreams
The information age and beyond
The Beat was overjoyed with the pace of human innovation, but nothing would put the pedal to the medal as much as the computer. Through these amazing machines of silicon and circuits music could be quantized and synthesized to new heights. Radio waves were now pouring information in 1s and 0s to every corner of the world while new cables undersea would send beams of light, sharing information, ideas and music everywhere. But Time and The Beat weren’t finished yet and the computer would soon become the composer. Would it eventually become .. the audience too?? And The Beat goes on …