Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
At 8:04 PM -0300 9/29/01, Matthias Grob wrote: >Do you create music that could not be played (or presented at a >suficient low cost) without loop technology and make a considerable >part of the income out of it? >Do you know such musicians that are not on the list? Pamela Z comes to mind. Though I haven't heard her perform in some years now, in the early '90s she was doing remarkable things with two or three modest delays and voice. As her career has developed she's been able to expand her performance resources, both technologically and with increased human resources (such as her group The Qube Chix). I've seen similar progressions in other composer/performers' development. Paul Dresher is a good example, particularly since I saw some of the early stages of his loopism. Like many of us in the 1970s he was using live tape delay systems. He had a couple of funky tape decks hooked up as a guitar system, and he started perfecting looping techniques using the multitrack machines in the studio at UCSD. Then in 1979 he and one of the Music Department techs, Paul Tydelski, built a 4-track looping system out of a modified TASCAM 40-4 and a VCA-based mixer controlled by 24 foot pedals. Over the next few years Paul performed solo guitar gigs with this system, and he used it in an ensemble context with the George Coates Ensemble. After leaving that group he formed the Paul Dresher Ensemble with drummer Gene Refkin and actor/singer Rinde Eckert, eventually adding other performers as his financial resources and musical vision increased. At some point the tape system was retired in favor of (I think) three Echoplexes, and in recent years I believe all the Ensemble music is through-composed and performed live by a much larger group (perhaps Kim can elucidate). This is a good example of both economic and aesthetic evolution at work. In the early stages his musical language was much more in a "classic" minimalist mode and the more restrictive formal structure imposed by tape-based looping technology was in keeping with the style. After a few years the musical limits of both system and style had been explored to a great degree and there was both a need and the resources to expand into new stylistic areas. P.S. While looking back to the '70s and '80s, I'll mention a couple of composers whose principal work was created and performed with loop-related technology: Ingram Marshall and Daniel Lentz. Marshall's earlier works used a recycling delay system based on a pair of 4-track decks with the tape threaded between them, and most of his work of that period was preformed solo or with one or a small number of live performers. Like Paul, Ingram began to explore the implications of delay and repetition using expanded performance resources, both with and without live electronics. Daniel Lentz based many of his works of the '70s and '80s on tape systems. He used a process of accumulation to build up musical and spoken phrases out of fragments, initially with analog tape and later with digital multitracks. I'm not sure of his specific technique during the analog period, but the digital versions were performed by successive record/rewind/overdub. I haven't heard any recent work, but he also seems to have expanded his performing forces to be able to accomplish similar musical processes without the use of recording technology. -- ______________________________________________________________ Richard Zvonar, PhD (818) 788-2202 http://www.zvonar.com http://RZCybernetics.com http://www.cybmotion.com/aliaszone http://www.live365.com/cgi-bin/directory.cgi?autostart=rz