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Looper's Delight
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MiqSk8@aol.com wrote, in part, >what is it that all of us are trying to achieve > by looping? i'm really interested in the sounds coming out of this group. > Atmospheres? Textures? "Sound Carpets"? Precision Pointillism? Industrial > Indigestion? or more of the compositional types of multiple loops >created on > the fly and then swapped between? in other words a way to build >traditional > sections of composition to be arranged. i realize this predates the >looper's > cd, but i think it would be cool for us to get an idea of what's going on > with all this equipment and talent and ... For me, the answer is, paraphrasing David Torn, "My playing, but more of it." I crave the sound of a band, but seem to be incapable of finding other musicians with musical objectives close enough to my own to make it work. So, for the past ten years, I've been playing with myself (quite literally-- and I cheerfully acknowledge the validity of the implication), adding (to my guitar and vocals) first harmonica, then pedal keyboard/synthesizer, then MIDI guitar/synthesizer, subtracting a drum machine, and finally (to date) adding a Vortex. (Probably any details you might be interested in are on my Web site, which is devoted to tools and tips for the one-person band, so I won't go into them here.) I actually did this for what I laughingly called my living for six years, but quit playing for money four years ago after it became a job, and one I hated. I've only been looping for a few months, and that on an extremely limited basis, so I haven't achieved much. I do have some pretty clear goals, though: 1. I've weaned myself from the drum machine, but still crave percussion, and don't have any hands or feet free to play it. Even if I used it for nothing else, the Vortex gives me the capability to create percussive loops (slapping the muted guitar strings, scraping them, tapping a pickup, etc.) to fill that musical space-- without using someone else's samples, and using sounds I create during the performance of the piece itself. 2. I'm not a very impressive singer, or guitarist, or performer in general-- my strength, in the past, has been my songwriting (mainly the lyrics, but the music for a few of them may rise a little above ordinary). This began to bother me, some while before I "retired." I began fantasizing about creating music that would not depend for its success on my skill with the English language. I remember thinking, the second or third time I saw Bela Fleck and the Flecktones in concert, "These folks are like Abba without vocals-- how could anyone in the world _not_ respond to this music?" Pierre Ben Susan and Badi Assad have also strongly reinforced this urge. But my technical skills are far below any of these people. If I'm to succeed, I'll have to (a) get to a level where I'm using the technology _intelligently_ enough to make the music really interesting, and (b) move beyond that to a level where no one listening to my music, including myself, is consciously aware of the technology. I don't know if I can do it, but it seems a more realistic objective than attempting to achieve the guitar fluency of Ben Susan or Assad. (I've been playing since before either of them was born, and haven't managed it yet, so that hope seems pretty dim...) 3. I've always been an accompaniment sort of guitarist, either strumming or playing fingerstyle. I was always content to leave the distorted single-note wailing to others-- until I heard Sonny Sharrock and Nicky Skopelites' _Faith Moves_. Suddenly, I wanted to try to play like Sonny (why did he have to go and die before I could hear him live?). But my left foot is no substitute for Nicky. Just maybe, my left foot and the Vortex can be. 4. Before I started working as a one-person band, I played steel guitar in country bands for a long time. The pedal steel guitar put fewer obstacles between me and the music than any other instrument or combination of instruments I've tried. But the way I played it, and the ways I want to play it, don't work for me without accompaniment, and I haven't had it out of the case in ten years. Once I develop the ability to loop on the fly with some consistency, I just may be able to play it again. So my looping efforts are primarily aimed at accompaniment. I'm not unaware of the possibility of making the loop the focus of the music, and have experimented with gradually changing loops (very easy with the Vortex). But I'm a very chord-oriented person, and I'll have to have more delay time than the Vortex gives me before I can get serious about that kind of approach. I don't know whether it qualifies as looping (and don't much care), but I'm also playing around with canons, both live (using MIDI guitar and the 12-second delay capability of the Casio VZ-8) and sequenced (step-entered using the software that came with the computer). But as far as describing, categorizing, or labelling the music itself (Precision Pointillism? Sound Carpets?)-- hey, we musicians are exempt! That's a job for critics and other non-musicians! ;-) But you can hear a few examples of my primitive efforts for yourself at my Web site, if you're so inclined. > personally i'm still struggling with all the abilities of the 'plex and >the > timing of using next loop-so i'm concentrating more on the single loop. >it's > amazing how varied the result can be by taking different approaches >(chordal, > linear, heavy, ethereal, synchronized, chaos). i am constantly just >letting > it go onto tape. (i'm spending all weekend in the california mountains >to go > through them all!) I hope we get a chance to hear them from your Web site! John Pollock mailto:johnpollock@delphi.com http://people.delphi.com/johnpollock (Troubador Tech)