The future of looping, etc.

[TritoneDW <TritoneDW@aol.com>]

Hey folks,

I wouldn't say this is anyone's future but my own (maybe a couple other
people, like Paul Dresher--but it's probably more his past), but I thought 
I'd
share what I'm most interested in right now: using loops as a compositional
tool, rather than an improvisational one.

I'm writing "contemporary classical" music (for lack of a better
term--everyone gets upset when you use the more accepted term "serious 
music")
for solo electric guitar right now, and the looper opens up certain 
intiguing
possibilities for the composer. For example, you can have stacked 
structures
much larger than usually available with four fingers and six strings 
(fifths
stacked over 3 or 4 octaves for example). You can create shifting walls of
texture (I'm sure everyone here knows that), which can be interesting both 
as
background and foreground. I don't think anything I'm doing with this is
groundbreaking or unusual , except that my approach is specifically
compositional (in a "classical" way, rather than jazz or post-rock, or
whatever).

Of course, I do the "rock" thing, too--usually walls of guitar noise, 
rather
than looped lines or chord progressions. My approach to this is mostly 
improv,
although I have some favorite textures I tend to fall back on pretty often.

Anyway, that's my thing---let's hear from more people, eh what?

Drew Wheeler