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Looper's Delight
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All the talk about right brain vs. left brain, technology vs. art, seeing vs. hearing, MIDI balls, MIDI foot switches, etc seems oddly related, to me. I am just finishing a large looping programming project, the Looper Construction Kit, which I'm sure to talk about lots more in a few weeks. While intensely working on it, I felt like I was in a state of mind rather opposite to when I improvise music. Kind of a right/left brain thing. Programming sometimes seems all structure and discipline. Extremely low entropy stuff, nothing left to chance. Highly goal driven activity in that you clearly imagine the goal then work directly towards it. As opposed to improvising, where I never feel like I know where I am or where I'm going until I get there. And then I don't care *where I am now* because I'm always looking towards the horizon. And there seems to be a kind of yin/yang balance between total chaos and total order. I see this especially in our looping tools. The EDP, for example, represents an ordering force. Even if I create total random noise (is there such a thing?), when I loop it, it becomes rhythmic and hence structured. The EDP imposes a order, in particular with the new sync features of Loop IV. Our loopers are like our partners. They're the law-and-order accountants. They pay attention to the details, freeing us from the mundane for the more creative work as we play. In the preparation phase, we expend our ordering efforts. We program our loopers, footswitches, etc for our anticipated needs just as we train our fingers, arms, hands, and voices. In the performance phase, we depend on our prior work for our creative process. With technology, I can depend on somebody else's prior work like a fulcrum for my creative efforts. Time for more coffee... Dennis Leas ------------------- dennis@mail.worldserver.com