Popularity/influence/etc.

[Andre LaFosse <altruist@earthlink.net>]

Hoo boy...

I make no claims as to the coherence of any of this:

One big problem with "popularizing" looping is that there really needs
to be a visual and/or sonic representation of the process itself, in
order for the real-time aspect to be fully understood.  Torn playing on
a Bowie or Tori album is great, but if people are just listening to the
end result, are they going to appreciate that the sounds they're hearing
were done (at least in part) in real time?  And if they do, will it make
them want to buy a $600 hardware box with a fundamental learning curve,
rather than a $200 copy of Ableton Live or ACID?  

In other words, is there anything about the actual sonic result that
will offer something that can be substantially distinct from what can be
done in a standard step-time studio assembly manner?  

This to me is one of the fundamental challenges - not just in a
promotion/advertising sense, but in a purely creative and aesthetic one.
 Can you actually accomplish a MUSICAL or PERFORMATIVE result with these
tools that WOULDN'T be possible by just playing a pre-recorded backing
track or spending a few days splicing and dicing on a computer?  Just
because you CAN do this stuff in real time, is there any intrinsic
musical result that truly TAKES ADVANTAGE of the real-time angle?  Can
you inspire people to WANT to take the time to learn the physical and
mental technique of using a real-time looper, when they could just
endlessly manipulate pre-packaged drum loops in a software sequencer 
instead?

Influence/popularity/etc... I understand where everyone's coming from,
and I think everybody's right in a way.  There's no age limit in terms
of when any person can start or stop being influenced by another artist,
but that isn't really what Kim's talking about.  What he's describing is
a certain social/cultural/commercial critical mass that occurs when a
particular idea is delivered in a sufficiently appealing way to make a
large number of people want to emulate that idea.

So you have Jimi Hendrix playing the Stratocaster, which prior to his
break was a pretty unpopular guitar on the verge of being discontinued. 
Then Jimi comes along and it becomes what is probably the most popular
electric guitar of all time.  Or you have the Beatles come along, and
suddenly everybody who was at a certain age in 1964 wants to start a
band.  Or Van Halen gets big, and then you've got ten years of
pointy-shaped guitars with flashy graphics, ten humbuckers, and Floyd
Rose Whammy bars.  

Then Nirvana is huge, and instrument makers start going for neo-retro
kitsh designs to reel in kids who are embarassed by the pointy shred
machines and want to play pawnshop Jaguars instead.  And then nu-metal
bands start playing seven string Ibanez guitars which had been passe'
just a few years ago (much as Kurt Cobain's Fenders were considered
hopelessly unhip during the years when the Ibanez 7-strings were first
shipping), and now lots of kids are buying 7-strings so they can play
nu-metal tunes in their bedroom.  

But here again, in each case there's both a musical and a visual
signifier to each of these movements that people can latch onto.  The
pawn-shop Jaguar is an apt metaphor for where a lot of the grunge guys
were coming from musically, just like the pointy Jackson guitar with the
graphic of the chick in the bikini on the front made sense being played
by a hair-metal band singing songs about the virtues of 17-year-old
girls.  

I'm already boring myself, so I'll continue this in another post....

--Andre the self-bored