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Looper's Delight
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For me, my pivotal moments occured when I signed up for a class at UCSD entitled "Introduction To Music Making". The instructor turned out to be a large man with an equally large laugh named George Lewis. He said he wanted us to learn how to make music with anything instead of just playing the usual instruments in the conventional manner. Then he started playing videos and recordings of himself and some weirdos he played with like that old guy who plays his violin like he's going to start a fire from bowing so hard, a bandleader named John Zorn, a neck-bending guitar player named Bill... uhh... Frizz-something... :), and other folks. Among the many ideas he fed us for "music making" was collecting cheap stuff from pawn shops like old analog delay pedals (this was _before_ the vintage-anything craze), Radio Shack mixers, cassette tapes made for answering machines, and so on. He said he and his buddies used this cheap stuff (in conjunction with old boomboxes) to make loops and other noise. All in all, it was the most enjoyable class I ever took in college. I got turned on to the idea that making music in less conventional ways could be really fun. Quite a few students left because they were pissed off by the strange music George played (actually, most of these were the ones that came to UCSD expecting a conservatory-type of music education and didn't realize the contemporary music bent of its music department). One stayed just long enough so that he could put on his project which involved him standing in the middle of the classroom repeating "This is bullshit!" over and over. I wonder what his grade was? :) Hey come to think of it, if he had made loops of "This is bullshit!" and played them for us he might have actually gotten a decent grade! :) :) :) But I think the ones that stayed were, like me, attracted to the playful atmosphere in music-making that George fostered. I got myself a delay pedal and used it to make haunted-house type noises for one of the three projects in which I participated. Maybe I ought to dig it out again and have more conversations with myself. Cheers, Paolo Valladolid --------------------------------------------------------------- |Moderator of Digital Guitar Digest, an Internet mailing list |\ |for Music Technology and Stringed Instruments | \ ---------------------------------------------------------------- | \ finger pvallado@waynesworld.ucsd.edu for more info \ | \ http://waynesworld.ucsd.edu/DigitalGuitar/home.html \| -----------------------------------------------------------------