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Looper's Delight
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At 10:22 AM -0800 2/28/02, Matthias Grob wrote: >But have you heard of a meeting of users of a new technology or style? >Did the saxophone players meet in the 40ies to show the whide >application of it to each other? Or the sythesizer players in the >60/70ies? >Or have you heard that musicians of some style met in a bigger >number in a organized way to exchange their music and tricks? Perhaps there is more of this than you realize. I have attended conferences of microtonal instrument builders and composers of multichannel surround sound music. I have participated in festivals of extended vocal techniques and interactive computer music. The computer music and electroacoustic music community worldwide has many organizations and conferences devoted to various aspects of these musics. >So I am wondering more and more what the "thing" in looping is. >Maybe its about improvising. Looping definitally gives a new dimension to >it. For years I have used the term electroacoustic improvisation to describe what I do in performance. I don't really think of myself as a "looper" per se, although I have used looping techniques as an important part of my musical process. The central matter for me is the use of electronic processing as a musical instrument. When my friends and I started doing this in the mid-1970s we were using the available technology of the day: tape delays and synthesizers and simple effects boxes. Over the years we've adopted newer technologies as they have come available. I'd say this is true of all of us, with each jumping in at particular moment in the evolution of the technologies and styles, and each having a personal "take" on the possibilities afforded. My personal "take" has been influenced by Marshall McLuhan's idea of media as extensions of the human body and nervous system = instrument as musical prosthesis. I've also been influenced by Norbert Wiener, the father of Cybernetics, and by various researches into music cognition. One (perhaps obvious) thing to consider is that loop music is a technological manifestation of principals of pattern, imitation, and hierarchy in polyphonic music (canon, fugue, call and response, isorhythm, colatomic structure, etc.). Another thing is the role of memory in improvisation (our loop and delay devices serving both as mnemonic aids and as "sidemen"). >Gary Hall got me from the air port and said more or less: >"Its an approach to composition based on interaction between the >musician and the processing." A succinct way of saying the same thing. -- ______________________________________________________________ Richard Zvonar, PhD (818) 788-2202 http://www.zvonar.com http://RZCybernetics.com http://www.cybmotion.com/aliaszone http://www.live365.com/cgi-bin/directory.cgi?autostart=rz