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Looper's Delight
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Many of the 'live' acts I've worked with this summer used DAT or sequenced bits to enhance their performance and, properly done, works quite well. Doc Powell flew in from LA with his guitar and a Zip drive, used the backline provided and hired local hotshots to read charts. Keiko Matsui relied on her drummer to trigger a DAT as well. Chris Botti's keyboardist used an old Akai sampler and zip drive for some backing tracks and Alexander Zonjic's drummer, Danny Cox uses Ddrum triggers and an MPC for sample triggering. In every case, there was a full band on stage, playing all of their parts, so they were not relying on the 'samples' to provide the show. We had a few discussions at Tuesday coffee about all this. Everyone seems to agree that it is all about the music and leaving the audience satisfied rather than feeling guilty about using a few backing bits. On the other hand, one local client that recently opened for Culture Club, said their whole show was canned! The musicians played, but there was only stage volume and their 'performance' did not reach the house. With the exception of the vocals, they relied entirely on the DAT for their show. This is certainly what we are trying to avoid, but I don't a single person in the audience knew. Ultimately, pleasing the people that sign the check is the underlying factor. Spelled out, this is the club owner, promoter or the ticket holding audience. If they leave at the end of the show feeling they 'got what they paid for', they just might have favorable comments about the artist. This word of mouth advertising might help to fill the next club/festival you play! We can climb the mountain and shout for artistic integrity or purism and that's ok too. If you sleep good at night, pleased the audience and got paid, it really doesn't matter how you got there. Just remember to avoid felling that you've arrived! ;) Respect Will Brake Soul Fruit Electronics -----Original Message----- From: msottilaro [mailto:sine@zerocrossing.net] Sent: Friday, August 29, 2003 5:15 PM To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com Subject: Re: Fear of "canned" loops On Friday, August 29, 2003, at 01:49 PM, ArsOcarina@aol.com wrote: > Anyone else have thoughts, opinions and/or experiences to share? > Or does everyone here associate anything "canned" with Milli Vanilli > and/or Karaoke? I guess some types of audiences would even consider > looping as "cheating" in some way. I guess the line between "live" and > "canned" loops has become blurry over the years and has largely > ceased to matter to me at all. This is exactly the type of show that I've been formulating. So far it's working out really well. Yesterday I received my M-audio USB audio interface and I was happily surprised to find a version of Live included! It's a truncated version of 1.5, but as far as I can tell it will act *exactly* like I intend it to. One of the biggest reasons for me to do this was a size/setup time issue, but I'm also finding that this type of "Live Production" is really fun and allows me to make music that I couldn't make using my old setup. Frankly, the whole idea of "live looping" is great... to us. However, to the audience they could care less. All they want is a good show and interesting music. They could care less about how you get there. I'm still in the beginning phases of this Looper/DJ setup, but the first steps show a lot of promise. While the Repeater was the tool I used to make the loops, it's not what's playing the loops back. Live synced to the E-MU Command Station is taking care of that. I can play all I want using the Command Stations Pads or a small midi keyboard so I don't feel like I'm not getting a chance to add harmonic content to the music. A Numark Axis 9 CD player let's me scratch and mutilate samples to my hearts content. Over all I have not felt like I missed my old setup at all and I can now easily compete with DJs in terms of setup times and production value. I can't wait to hear your new CD Ted! I still love the old one! Mark Sottilaro