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Looper's Delight
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Wow, talk about the shchlepp from hell: Tonight I play the Calabash Awards (with the genius who has what looks like an airport at his feet when he plays,my brother Bill) and I have to play different instruments on every song (we are the ethnic looping 'pit orchestra' for this professional ethnic arts award show) AND..........I am an awardee this year as well (thank you, thank you, I want to thank my mother and ............) so I have to take a second looping set up to do my solo piece. which brings me to my philosophy of schleppage: Mark Sottilaro wrote about not wanting to set up and tear down his studio everytime (a reason why I owned three professional drumsets during the 80's and 90's: one for the recording studio ready to go, one to teach with and one at the rehearsal hall). I definitely relate, Mark.........I have always noticed that once the gig is over, I'm tired and don't feel like setting up everything again and sometimes won't compose for several days............ ..........until I got my PC system.........now, oddly enough, I never use my performance looping rigs in my recording process (except on the last CD where I minidisced 22 live tunes). The computer writing process is soooooo deep that I am a long ways from running out of ways to be creative in it. For live gigging, I have two set ups: 1) The 'festival' setup which has (until tonight when one of them died, dammit) two line 6 footpedals and a harmonizer and now, my Vocal 300 (which I'm in love with) This setup is really low tech, fits on a modest single footpedal board and makes me be more zen in my playing because i have to concentrate on being in love with the sounds that I make (as opposed to how many delicious ways I can mangle them-----Michael Klobuchar, you are a god...........LOL) and 2) My "i get to play anything I damn well please at this show because I can take as long as I like to set up" rig: Mackie Powered Monitors, Mackie Mixer, Repeater (fed into EDP), EDP (fed into Repeater), Lexicon MX 500 verb and the aforementioned Vocal 300 plus a plethora of instruments (including synths, samplers, basses, wind synth, guitar (if I have the courage to actually play it in public)and a zillion other percussive and found objects. No gig's gear is ever exactly the same as I love to surprise myself (much to the chagrin of my poor brother who has to put up with my tech freakouts------which are legion and frequent........LOL............thanks, Bill, I love you dearly for putting up with me. I do have to say that the old back has gotten noticeably older in recent years though and the thought of a laptop running things is pretty sexy to me (and probably out of reach for many of the reasons that Kim elucidated. Come on gang, where's that really articulate rebuttal to Kim's ascertions? Who only uses a laptop and things it's the cat's meow.........I want to hear from you!!! I'm still not completely sold on buying a laptop. okay, enough blathering...........later, Rick (who will be no longer be a dulcimer performance virgin after tomorrow night.....LOL)