looping: a structural approch...

[bruno kleinefeld <brunoklein@ideastudioweb.com>]

dear all


whenever I've time I take tours in your webpages
trying to listen and understand what everybody do with the looping

It's very interesting trying to identify the not always conscious 
process underlying
the operation of looping.

Most of the times the first, almost instictive use of this technology 
is a kinda of antidote to solitude
I.e.: I play by myself, but myself is me and my looping tools, that 
multiply me and create other me (mainly comping, riffing or 
droning...) so that I can play over that my solo, my solo, my 
solo...and so on.

This is what I call the lonesome guitarist complex...
looks very blue-eyed, I know, but believe it or not, it's what most of us 
do
(I'm not calling myself out...)

out from there opens a vaste land of possibilities:
where technology is no more a way to represent something
or to fill a gap

I thought it would be interesting and usefull trying to describe 
these operations
and try to build an archetypal or structural alphabet or a list of 
possible processes
analyzed not in their concrete sequences of interactions with the 
machine/machines
but under a more abstract point of view, whichever is the concrete 
interpretation one can give
of that

I'll bring just a couple of examples of looping- concepts I sometime use:

THE HIDDEN PLOT
Start overdubbing layers with seemingly no rythmic sense.
the rythmic meaning comes at the end of the overdubbing
as a inexpected final result

COMP MOVING
instead of looping the comping, loop the melody.
Then start comping over moving and changing the harmonic sense
of the phrase.

I m's just considering now a tipical static way of interpretating the 
loop thing.
Obviously structures become more and more complex when they become
dynamic, for instance with feedback, substitutions, etc.

so what do we do when we loop?
Is there someone willing to share this?

thank you

bruno



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