Re: prerecorded loops

["mark francombe" <mark_francombe@hotmail.com>]

I have a simple philosophy on this:

1 .only have on tape "that which CANNOT be played live" and
2. dont pretend that it is..

i find i sleep very well!




Mark Red




----- Original Message -----
From: <ArsOcarina@aol.com>
To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 2:54 AM
Subject: Re: prerecorded loops


> Hi all,
>
> Hmmmm . . . interesting discussion. I can well understand
> most of your aversions to prerecorded elements in music
> as somehow being "fake" or something. We all remember
> Mili Vanilli pretty well I suppose. And, as loopers we
> may all be a little bit sensitive to folks thinking the same
> about what we do -- that looping is a "cheat" of some kind.
>
> However, for the past couple of years I have been using at
> least SOME prerecorded loops in my performances and
> recordings. It was not always like that though . . . It's been
> a fairly recent thing for me. But, provisionally, I have no problem
> with anything that's creative and "works" on some "gut" level.
> But hey . . . that's just me.
>
> Once upon a time . . .
>
> When I lived in southern California there were any number
> of brilliant people to call on at any time (or so it seemed) to
> organize a jam, a gig or a recording session for the stuff
> I was interested in doing . . . whenever or whatever. I may
> be over-romanticising the past a little . . . but whatever.
> Now that I live in Medford, OR there seems to be a dearth
> of musicians around of my own "ilk" (whatever the heck that
> is) and interests to try to put something together and
> pull something off.
>
> So, a few years ago I began by recording snippets of my
> own past material, tweaking it in the computer and loading
> it into a phrase sampler to form the "ambient beds" of
> some "new" pieces. It could be backwards samples me or
> my 3 kid's singing . . . or some of my own m'bira or ocarina
> playing . . . or didgeridoo or keyboard or kitchen utensils . . .
> power tools, whatever . . . what have you. It was my stuff and
> I was trying to find ways of making a "live" audio collage to
> play with and against. And . . . I had enough gear to cart to a gig
> already without bringing a whole orchestra's worth of instruments
> along too.
>
> I've been doing looping since the early '80s. So . . . it just
> didn't seem like that big of a "conceptual" jump to use loops
> of material that I'd previously created at home in the studio.
> Nobody could really "play" the stuff I was doing this with
> anyway. Forget Milli Vanilli, even Pink Floyd has been pre
> recording "music concrete" accompaniment for decades.
> It's nothing new. Great gobs of folks were doing it eons
> before that.
>
> Anywho, I share most folks a strong distaste for drum machines.
> But, I eventually I discovered that in the computer I could
> take a snippet of live (or prerecorded) druming/percussion
> and make a somewhat more interesting "beat" loop out of it
> than I could EVER actually program into a drum machine.
> Yes, sometimes these loops were very "static." But still,
> somehow they were pretty compelling and even musically
> "useful" nonetheless.
>
> Eventually I found ways if gathering several loops that fit
> together as an interesting "family" so to speak . . . ambient
> stuff that interrelated thematically, plus percussion bits
> that interlocked and subdivided time in interesting ways and
> pads/swells that were in the same keys. These formed
> the basises of new "pieces" that could still be "played" in
> a live sense . . . minimally, sort of . . . and they also
> allowed some flexibility still to turn that "unexpected corner"
> every now and then to explore an idea that hadn't occurred
> to me before when improvising on my guitar.
>
> And . . . to play with the idea even further . . . I eventually took
> one of those silly Yamaha keyboards with those danged canned
> rhythm tracks in it (I'd bought it for my kids originally) and
> I recorded some of the more fun, ironic, ersatz bits into my
> computer, treated and distorted the holy bejezus out of them
> and "viola" . . . some of the more "rockish" pieces on my CD
> were sort of unintentionally born that way. Ironically, I'd put
> them together originally so I could "exorcise" all those rock
> guitar "wankster" demons in the safety and privacy of my own
> home . . . and get them out of my system before a studio recording
> or practice session of more "serious pieces." Funny thing is that
> they got recorded anyway and it is often THOSE tracks that s
> some folks single out as faves on the CD . . . go figure.
>
> So, here I am. Using unsequenced but still very much prerecorded
> material in what I do in the studio and live. Is it legitimate? Is it
> fakery and flimflammery? I dunno. Is it real or Memorex? A little
> of each I suppose. The whole live audio "collage" aspect still seems
> fun and "immediate" and emotionally real to me . . . but I'm pretty
> sure there's something seriously "wrong" with me anyway so it's
> better not to judge by what I think. I try to keep a sense of humor
> (and perspective) about the proceedings anyway.
>
> Here's another question . . .
>
> In the past 6 months I have snipped a bit of orchestral music
> from an obscure foreign movie soundtrack CD . . . just a couple
> of string swells and a swell or two of brass. I had to alter them to be
> in the same key as each other (and all of them together into one of
> the keys I like to play in on the guitar). As individual elements one
> would never associate them with any particular piece of someone's
> "intellectual property" they are almost so completely and totally
> generic -- though in truth I must admit that they are still, in fact,
> other artist's work (especially the orchestra's), even though I've
> edited and altered them significantly with filters and other processing 
>in
> Hyperprism. Until I have access to an orchestra of my own . . . am
> I doing something seriously wrong here? Maybe? Maybe not?
> Someone wanna offer an opinion?
>
> One of my favorite electronic musicians, James Tenney, made a
> "digital" sample of Elvis's "Blue Suede Shoes" straight off a single
> record at Bell Labs in the early '60s. The computer recording
> "medium" at the time was a big stack of IBM punch cards -- anyone
> here remember those? Anywho, He took those cards and semi-
> randomly shuffled them up and then ran them back through the
> computer again. The resulting recording became one of his major
> "breakthrough" pieces -- though it wouldn't sound too remarkable
> to anyone nowadays with the audio capabilities of personal computers
> currently available. Modern sampling . . . and maybe even a few
> DJs owe a lot to him conceptually.
>
> In the meantime . . . I dunno. Fake? Real? I'm just makin' noise,
> playing guitar and amusing myself I suppose. What I do isn't
> for everybody. And I'm certainly not making any money off it
> (though I don't think THAT'S any excuse either). Is it music? Is
> it artistically valid? Is it honest? These are all serious questions.
> Hey . . . let the "flame" wars begin.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Ted Killian
>
> http://www.pfmentum.com/flux.html
>