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Looper's Delight
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The subject line of the last email got me thinking.... There's been a lot of back-n-forth here on the notion of looping live, and the potential audience reception (or lack thereof) to someone who seems to merit the term "manipulating" as much as "performing." (Using the former in a positive way, that is ... I certainly don't mean manipulating the audience.... or at least, if you are, hopefully you don't have TOO many evil intentions... :-) Anyway, my interest is: what do you do on the EXTRAmusical side of things, when performing loop-based music (in any setting) to better relate your approach to your audience? (assuming that not everyone in the audience will be familiar with live looping) All the stuff like lights, staging, band/performer setup, clothing, visual stuff (films, etc), other mood controlling devices.... what's your style? I'm also assuming we're not all looping at the local pub, and that we actually DO have control over the setting somewhat. I mean, looping is often close to sound art anyhow, so what I'm wondering is how we "install" ourselves. I'll start off: since I'm nearly always performing loop-based stuff at very "intimate" venues, I can have my way with nearly all aspects of the environment, so I'll keep the lights way down and focus a few colored lights at the stage area, and use the regular lighting at the back of the venue to just barely illuminate the rest of the room. I loop on solo guitar, and I run my rig into an amp, which is then miced and sent into a mixer with various delays and two Line 6 DL4s for looping on the effects sends. I send the mixer output in stereo to the PA, and through PA speakers which are placed as far stage right and left as I can get them. Also, in the far back corners of the room (or near the back row of audience, in the case of a seated concert) I'll put two floor wedge monitor speakers: the one in the right rear corner of the room gets the left channel of the PA signal, the one in the left rear corner gets the right channel. Since my stuff falls often into the "noise" category, while still being reluctantly (for lack of a better word) ambient, having sound all around the audience is, for me, part of the experience. Audiences generally seem into it; no one's complained about feeling fenced in, or anything.... :-) Aside from the speaker setup, and maybe burning incense on stage, that's my deal. I never dress up, usually staying as nondescript as I can, and I never talk to the audience. I'd love to experiment with playing along to abstract films, or other types of projections, but haven't yet. (The more eye-candy the better -- I'm not too much fun to watch, I wouldn't think) Alright, so .... anyone else? peace, Elio ---------------------------- http://www.mp3.com/delusions