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Looper's Delight
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Max ("max valentino" ekstasis1@hotmail.com) wrote:
> It interests me how others here are using their loopers. especially
>those who
might be working within an ensemble. If you are working within the
structures of ³traditional² song forms, how does that work?
Iıve been using loopers in three settings recently, ranging from
ambient/avant/improv to French tradtional music. The ambient band
(www.big-hair.co.uk) features fretless bass, theremin and trombone and is
essentially structured improvisation using loops now and again with various
boxes and long long delays. By contrast, I play fretless bass in a five
piece band (www.pauljamesmusic.com) (drums, keyboards/accordion, samples,
sax/bagpipes) which plays real songs. The role of the looper is to provide
digital voodoo to complement bagpipes and accordion playing. I also use
atempo loops and very long delays with a pitch shifter/Ebow to play
melodies/harmonies which sound like nothing else you would usually
encounter
in folk music. Works well. We get gigs.
> The other interesting aspect of this thread is of the nature of
>performance.
> Especially with solo loopers, there is a tendency towards ³shoe-gazing².
> We might have so much going on with our feet and hands that any
>performance
> (read: entertainment) aspect is simply impractical. I did not make it to
> the recent Womenıs LoopFest, but from what I hear, there were several
> performers who added a visual spectacle to some very impressive looping
techniques.
> This is important as what we do as musicians is directly tied to our
>ability
> and need to communicate on some level with people who are not musicians.
> People who do not play are always fascinated by our alchemical abilities
>to
> conjure up sounds, which relate to them on various intellectual and
>visceral
> levels. Yet, attention spans do not last that long. The
> visual/entertainment aspect of our work is a great aid in our ability to
communicate.
Good point. I play the knobs on the DL4 and frankly it is desperately
non-visual (keeps me happy, though). By contrast, Big Hair involves three
visual instruments a bass guitar, the sliding of a trombone and the arm
waving involved in theremin playing. Also, my musical partner has long been
a theatre performer too. This means that we are able to shape performance
and harness his stage presence as well as his trombone/theremin skills.
If youıre asking people to pay to see you, then I think you have a duty to
give them something back it may be that the music you do is so fantastic
that the visual side is not relevant. On the other hand, there are positive
benefits for performer and audience if you spend time thinking about these
things. For example, Big Hair performed at an experimental music fest
where
the audience had been faced with serious electronic improvisers for two
days
solid, most of whom could have been playing in their bedroom for all the
notice they took of the two hundred people watching. We came on and spoke
to, and looked at the audience they responded very positively. In fact,
the audience reaction made us play better. A positive feedback loop (no pun
intended).
One side effect of modifying the sound of a bass with all this gear is that
the audience doesnıt realise what is making the sound it could be a
keyboard. Generally, they donıt care and Iım sure this is right. To me,
this
underlines the point that it is the music which is most important, not the
technology. The old punk rocker in me starts to get very suspicious when
the
gear itself becomes the reason to play.
v