Re: Loop approach: Loop as effect

[Alex Stahl <alex@pixar.com>]

When you get into the place where the creative decisions of the 
moment are about changing the timing, slicing and dicing, and warping 
a loop, as much or more than about playing into or against it, I 
almost think of this as something distinct from "looping". I'm not 
one for strict categorization of music methods but sometimes I call 
this "improvisational editing" instead of looping.  Whatever.

Probably the reason I sense some distinction is that the technology 
makes it possible to perform incredibly fluid and dense layers, and 
possible to perform awesome feats of rhythmic sample jugging, but 
it's still kind of hard to do both at the same time. Matthias' and 
Andre's playing at the LoopIV release party reminded me of this 
contrast, although I make no pretense to say that was anything more 
than my personal impression from a too-short evening.

I tend to run every piece of gear, whether it's an "instrument", an 
"effect", a "looper" or a "recorder" in and out of some central 
matrix mixer. This makes it easier to do stuff like route the loop 
feedback path through additional processing, so each repeat is 
transformed a little further, and bring multiple loops in and out of 
the mix. From there it's hard to avoid thinking of looping as an 
instrument rather than a technique, effect or a 
real-time-multitracking device. (ok, well, for me it's hard not to 
think that way but then again my audio heredity is more sound guy 
than musician anyway, if anyone still makes that distinction.)

When the loop starts to take on a life of its own and you can sort of 
pick it up and play it, then put it down and play something else for 
a while, that's when I get hopeful of achieving the elusive "time in 
loop music is like a rubber chicken laying golden eggs" effect.

-Alex S.


>Hey,
>
>Lately, I've been thinking about the different approaches of looping I
>experienced at the Santa Cruz Loopfest.  The two major camps I broke 
>it down to
>were those who used a looper very simply (such as myself), as in a 
>straight
>loop with some percentage of feedback with external effects and those who
>played with few or no effects, but used the looping device as an effect in
>itself (as in Andre Lafosse).
>
>So I just wanted to get a dialog going about the differences in these two
>approaches.  One of my first proto "loop effects" was me duct taping an 
>old
>Ibanez analog delay pedal to my guitar and twiddling with the time 
>and feedback
>knobs while I played.  I later graduated to an old Digitech RDS8000 pedal,
>which I put fat rubber washers on the knobs, so I could manipulate the 
>knobs
>with my feet while I played.
>
>Later, I seemed to partially abandon this technique, when I acquired 
>a bunch of
>digital effects that did pitch shifting and a whole other slew of sonic
>mayhem.  As my effects pallet became larger, my looping technique became 
>more
>simple.  With the addition of a decent guitar synth driving a synth module
>that's got over a thousand sounds, I find there's rarely a time when I 
>feel my
>sonic pallet is limited.  On the contrary, I feel it's often too much!  
>One of
>the things I do in my looping, is I set up large banks of effects and 
>synth
>sounds, and then kind of randomly choose them, not really knowing what 
>sound
>I'm going to get.  I then have to DEAL with it.  Fun.
>
>But then I saw Andre's little act, and I thought, "Gee that's COOL."  I 
>wonder
>why I didn't go more in that direction?  It inspired me to try a Repeater
>experiment I've been thinking about for a while.
>
>Start recording a loop while in Beat Detect mode.  Take off the Tempo 
>Lock.
>End the loop, and then try to manipulate the tempo by how you play.  
>Wacky!
>
>Mark Sottilaro