Re: gear schmear, music is best --> Loop dynamics

[Chris Chovit <cho@newdream.net>]

>
>Somebody pleeeeez start an interesting thread about music...anything! I'd
>do it but i'm too busy and exhausted to think at the moment. anything but
>gear......
>
>kim

OK....Lately, I've been listening to Terry Riley's "Dervishes" album.  Now,
I don't think he used looping devices on this stuff, but just performed the
repetition manually.  I am assuming that you all still consider this loop
music, even though he performed the loops, rather than using a device.
Steve Reich also falls into this category. Reich tends to slightly alter
each loop (sometimes by one note at a time) after a certain number of
repetitions.

It seems that there are two extremes:  Pure repetition and pure chaos.  As
loopists, we tend towards the pure repetition, but as it has been stated on
this list, this is static and tends to be boring.  The exciting part (for
me, anyways, is the introduction of a perturbation into pure repetition,
which propagates, and gives a dynamic or chaotic aspect to the music. For
me, Steve Reich was a master at this.  He played with slight alterations,
especially in the melody, where he would develop a melody one note at a
time, and then disintegrate the melody one note at a time.  Different
melodies would "rise and fall" in parallel, but with different start and
end points. "Music for 18 musicians" and "Music for mallet instruments" are
great examples of this.  Often, I have played this music for people, and,
upon first glance, they think it to be repetitive and boring.  On the
contrary, I love it because it is continually evolving.  Each moment in
time is related to past and future moments, but it is not the same!

This is what I am trying to work towards.  I am just now starting to
explore the possibilities of the NextLoop function on the Echoplex DP.  Has
anyone experimented with loading a bunch of really similar loops in there,
then changing between them with Next Loop function, to give the impresssion
of movement, without a drastic change?  Has anyone experimented with using
MIDI commands (perhaps driven by a sequencer) to switch between the loops?
Any startling revelations in this area?  Also, anyone using interesting
tricks with the feedback pedal to introduce dynamics?  If so, please
explain!


(sorry if I reverted back to gear talk, kim...perhaps there is a "loop"
quality to our talks, as well.

Chris