Not Underestimating an Audiences Ability to Understand our Process

["Rick Walker/Loop.pooL" <GLOBAL@cruzio.com>]

beautiful post, Mark....................I, too, think that most musicians
UNDERESTIMATE the intelligence, and interest of audiences.

It's all about communication, isn't it...........whether we're playing or
discussing our process.

If an audience member doesn't speak 'gear', it's up to us, I think, to
figure out a way to communicate the process.

I have found that there is a distinctly different response to pre-recorded
and live recorded loop tracks with audience members.

One of the things that I particularly love my Repeater (when the damn thing
works..:-)
for is that I can take a found object like a brass candy dish; gong it with
my thumb and then manipulate the overtones of the gonged sound with the
chamber of my mouth (acoustic vocoding, as it were) and loop a rhythmic
phrase using this technique.

The audience can see me do this........turning an ordinary object into a
loop and then
I can pick up the wind synth and play the resulting rhythmic loop in a
diatonic way.

I've had many audience members get really excited about this 'visceral'
connection to the
looping process and, indeed, several of them have gone out and bought
looping devices as
a consequence (if only we had one more year of gigging before Electrix went
out of business.........we might have created a bunch more sales for them
and they might have made it).

later,  Rick Walker


Mark Sottilaro wrote (about the professed inability of a fellow looper to
reach an audience member with an explanation of their technical process)

> I don't know about this.  I think a lot of people can get what you do if
you use
> good analogies and don't get too technical.  Last weekend I played a 
>rave,
and I
> had a woman ask if I had prerecorded my background tracks.  I just told
her, "In
> a sense, yes.  I recorded them here and had them immediately play back.
Kind of
> like being a DJ, but starting with a blank record.  First you've got to
put
> something on the record, then I use all sorts of computer gear to screw
with
> that recording."  I didn't get a blank stare at all.  People can be
open... if
> they care.  I usually never go into what I'm doing if they don't express
an
> interest.  Give a brief overview, and "black box" the complicated stuff.
If
> they want to know more, they'll ask.