SV: Not Underestimating an Audiences Ability to Understand our Process

["Per Boysen" <per@boysen.se>]

> -----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
> Från: Stuart Wyatt (Solo String Project) 

> People have come up to me after my performances and asked "So did you 
> compose the
> backing CD yourself?".... or "Why are you pressing those 
> buttons on the floor when I play?". 


He, he... I have been asked the same questions at gigs ;-)  But last
week when I performed twice a day at a music fair (both biz and public)
I was prepared and started every show with a short speech. Standing by a
stage mic and my midi foot controller, with a saxophone hanging around
my neck, I told the audience that "nothing you're going to hear is pre
recorded / I will create any sound you'll hear with this sax and this
guitar (Stratocaster lying on the floor by my feet), I will record parts
of what I'm playing and use my feet to cut those audio slices into new
music while playing new stuff o top of that". I also said that "I'm
using two loop samplers, an Echoplex and a Repeater" and then finally
"I'm going to improvise music but of course you can as well use loopers
as a tool for composing or performing "normal" music". And then I played
for ten to fifteen minutes.

Quite often I got the reaction from someone in the audience: "Hey, you
should have been recording that!" so I guess no one took it for a
backing CD ;-) But I had made a clear point in emptying the memories of
both loopers after each song ("now that music is gone for ever... unless
some of you were not bootlegging it", stepping the DELETE ALL LOOPS
button). 

One positive effect from these seven gigs was that the very last
Repeater in stock was sold the day after (oops, I was saving up for that
one ;-). And I had at least two people wanting to buy Echoplexes - but
as a sad matter of fact they don't seem to be available here in Sweden
at the moment. 

The second improvisation I did was more clinic-like. I only played the
guitar to keep my mouth free for announcing each new step I was taking:
like "pitching down two octaves here" or "reversing the Echoplex while
in overdub mode" and then I tried to play stuff that made it easy to
hear what I was doing.

On some occasions I also did a third set after the main audience had
left, for only a few very interested people like musicians, producers
and journalists. 

Well, the bottom line is that you can help an audience to understand and
appreciate live looping. 'nuff said...

Best wishes

Per Boysen
________________
www.boysen.se
www.fuzz.se
www.upsweden.com