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Looper's Delight
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my tempo has became somewhat 'sub-human' since i began looping 15 years ago. this type of truth creates a lot of 'problems' with other players who take tempo issue 'not very serious'. particularly drummers. it takes a certain kind of drummer to hang with a looper to start with. its kind of like the book, 'zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance by robert pirsig. his search for 'truth' in the face of a 'non-truth' searching society, caused him much grief no matter how true his truth was, there were very few there to match it. in other words, up to a point do i want to be right or be happy? ah... right? ive lightened up somewhat with my tempo expectations of others but i still have a 'bare-minimum tempo excellence' that must at least be in order. ive always credited the looping tools for making my sub-human tempo what it is today. thanks mike nelson at boomerang!! anywho... good topic. will be my last post for a while. im taking a bit of a roadtrip and will not be online for the next month and 1/2. best to all. will pop back in when i come back. will also have 2 loopers delight t-shirts waiting for me to boot. peace and love to all! loop on and WATCH THE TEMPO to others. you best beware... jimmy george http://www.jimmygeorgearts.com ----- Original Message ----- From: Gene Ehrbar <gene@anomalyinc.com> To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com> Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2003 7:42 PM Subject: Introduction and thoughts on human/machine tempo issues > Hi everyone! > > First, a brief introduction -- my name is gene, and I'm in Portland, Oregon, > USA, Earth. I'm primarily a guitarist, though I fiddle with keys and > mandolin as well. I've been lurking on this list for a couple of weeks, and > have been quite impressed with both the signal-to-noise ratio and the > quality of the discussion (you all seem to be a thoughtful, helpful bunch). > > My looping is still in a pretty embryonic phase -- I've played guitar and > mandolin in a variety of (mostly rock, some bluegrass) groups over the > years, and became drawn to loop-based music when I started spinning records > a year or so ago. I had an RC-20 for a little while, till I discovered > Ableton Live (is anyone else on this list working with Live?), the > capabilities of which are worlds beyond the Boss pedal. My loops have been > mostly guitar and percussion so far, but I've begun using Propellerheads > Reason for synth sounds in conjunction with Live, and the results have been > pretty good so far (Reason and Live go together like peanut butter and > jelly). I'm doing all of this on a laptop with a 4-in-4-out+MIDI USB audio > interface, so even though I end up a little cable-happy, it's still > a managable gigging setup. I imagine if I'd been more into harware >synths > before getting into this, I might be reluctant to go this route, but so far, > it's been great. > > If anyone's interested, I'd be happy to offer some more in-depth thoughts on > Live. For now, I just wanted to add my $0.02 on the whole > drummer-tempo-sync thread. First off, I've found playing with Live the best > rhythm training exercise I've ever had. I've isolated a click in Live on > the monitor > channel, and until things get sufficiently going on a particular loop, I'll > check in on the click every now and then to keep things in sync, and once > something fairly rhythmic has been established, I'll more or less abandon > the click. I definitely feel like my timekeeping has improved in the short > time I've been playing this way. > > I had a bit of a coming out last night when sitting in with a friend's band > at a party -- once the band had finished their set, I did a little >looping > for the late-night crowd, and it seemed to come off quite nicely. > Intrigued, the drummer from the band crept behind his set and started > playing along. At first, I could see some frustration on his part at having > to sync to the machine's tempo, but he made an effort to listen, and it > really came together. I decided against offering him my second set of > headphones for a click, since he seemed to be doing fine without it, but > this seems like a logical step. Any non-click-averse drummers reasonably > close to Portland who happen to see this and feel like jamming, feel free > drop me a line. > > OK, enough rambling. Nice to meet you all! > > cheers, > gene > > > > >