Re: Appropriate use of canned material in concert was RE: Fear of "canned" loops

[msottilaro <sine@zerocrossing.net>]

I actually came into ambient music in a weird way by using canned Brian 
Eno.  We were playing a gig where the house put on a Brian Eno album on 
during our break.  I used to have a hard time wrangling the band back 
from breaks, so this time I just went up and started doing a duet with 
Brian.  One by one bandmates realized it was me playing around with my 
Digitech 8 sec delay (modified with large rubber washers so I could 
tweak the knobs with my feet.) and came up and joined me.  After all of 
us made it on stage we launched into our song (our stuff was kind of 
Pink Floyd influenced so weird noise intros weren't unusual) but the 
house never killed the Eno!  I liked it so much I bought a few Brian 
Eno albums and found that when I just listened to them, my pop-song 
mentality had a hard time with a long form ambient piece.  Playing 
along with it with the delay kind of made a lightbulb go off and after 
a bit I "got it."  Now I listen to stuff that's way more minimal and I 
have a hard time believing that there was a time where I thought, "When 
does the song start?"

The funny thing was I went to an ambient show recently and one of the 
pieces was an Eno cut slightly manipulated with a KAOSS pad with a 
Diggeriedoo player playing over it.  My mind instantly thought, "LAME." 
  It wasn't until I started writing this email that I realized that I 
was once guilty of the same thing.  I have a feeling that this was 
their planned act, while ours was a happy accident.  We also added a 
full composition over Brian.  OK, I'm now making excuses.  It was 
probably pretty lame.  I don't think we or the audience thought it was 
lame.  I remember my band mates thinking it was mostly funny.  It did 
turn me on to adding long ambient loops to a lot of our songs.

Anyway, I still recommend playing along with a Brian Eno album to any 
musicians who tell me that they don't "get" ambient music.  I wouldn't 
use it in a show, but as a way to understand ambient music I found it 
very useful.

Mark Sottilaro


On Tuesday, September 2, 2003, at 09:45  AM, Miko Biffle wrote:

>> From: "Emile Tobenfeld (a.k.a Dr. T)" <emile@foryourhead.com>
>> Subject: Appropriate use of canned material in concert was RE: Fear of
> "canned"
>> loops
>
>
>> Many years ago (20 or so), I did visuals for an early electro improv 
>> band
> in Boston (Mono Vogue -- I doubt you have heard of it)
>
>> One night, the leader was the only one there at the start of the set.
> Undaunted, he started a cheesey drum machine lick (in those days, that 
> was
> the only flavor), started a recording of an  incredibly dry lecture on
> industrial engineering, and played keyboard over that.
>
>> This still strikes me as the most appropriate use of precanned 
>> material in
> live music performance that I have encountered.
>
> Aha... This gets at my own theory (and reluctance) to use canned loops.
>
> The pre-recorded material should never appear smarter or upstage the 
> actual
> live musicians! I want pre-recorded stuff to be fairly dumb and 
> obviously
> there only to supply some simple function. Either timekeeping; 
> something to
> react to (the above example from Emile); SIMPLE atmospherics.
>
> If anything interesting is going to happen, I believe it should be 
> applied
> in real time. Fancy-pants stereo processing; re-contextualization of 
> the
> canned stuff with real-time creativity etc. Canned stuff should always
> appear dumber than the performer!
>
> If the canned stuff is the impressive stuff, there's really no 
> justification
> for the presence of the live musician!
>
> -Miko
>