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Re: Live Looping in an ensemble context.....what gear do u use?




How many of you loop with an ensemble? Could you get in touch with
me as I'd like to ask you a few questions.


I've been looping in a lots of duo contexts for about 9 years, and for the last three in lots of trios and quartets. The latest being Lawson/Dodds/Wood - a trio that came out of my loopy improv night The Recycle Collective. 

The trio is bass+loopage, drums+percussion, guitar+rhodes - you can hear the album, which was improvised live and then tweaked, at http://www.stevelawson.net/ldw

The only looper I use on the project (or anything else other than tiny gigs with less than 10 mins set up time) is the Looperlative. 

In this context, it allows me a few things I haven't effectively been able to get elsewhere (ruling out software loopage as the whole laptop thing really doesn't work for me...): 

I love that it's stereo, that the tracks can be synced to a 'musical click' (I can play a single beat or bar and then sync all my other stuff to that), the multiple tracks allow me to remix what I'm doing, the fidelity makes it really tough to tell what's looped and what isn't (unless I choose to make that obvious), the line levelness means it plays very well with my mixer, so I can, if I choose, loop everyone else in the band as well (my AccuGroove-driven bass rig acts as the PA for the whole band), the CC controllers and groups mean I can pitch/speed shift, change volume and feedback on individual tracks, groups of tracks or everything, and the 6 outputs mean that if we got booked into a bigger venue where us all monitoring off my PA was no longer feasible, I could route the 'click' type parts to a separate desk or channel to feed the drummers monitor. 

What I've found over the years of using the Looperlative is that my relationship with it gets ever deeper, and as such I think about it less and less. It's just there, it does what I want it to do, I rarely have to come up with work-arounds, it very rarely does anything I didn't want it to do, but it often surprises me in good ways (serendipity is the vitamin supplement of any good looping diet :) 

not sure if that's what you wanted by way of an answer, but it's what's on my mind after a few amazing gigs with Lawson/Dodds/Wood :) 

Steve

Where to find me on the web -
 _______________________
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