Re: Maybe why Avante-garde looping in US...

[r i c k m o n d <rickmond@yahoo.com>]

hehe that's my approach. i don't bother with counting
when i can help it, just feel and play. looping is
perhaps cheating in that sense, because you don't have
to play the same thing twice and whatever rhythm
you're trying to keep is locked in for you for the
most part.

as far as hip hop goes, i used to play in a hip hop
band. most everything is in 4/4 but there's a lot of
little rhythmic complexities/interlocking parts going
on in there. especially when you have beat-makers
using MPCs and creating non-standard (and often
unplayable) hi hat patterns, drum patterns, or
whatever, which is exactly what the neptunes do and
charge millions of dollars for. i agree that it's not
exactly rocket science but the aesthetic is all about
feel and groove, being a little behind the beat or
whatever, and therein lie the intricacies.

that said, i'm no longer in a hip hop band because,
quite frankly, it got boring.


--- Kris Hartung <khartung@cableone.net> wrote:

> Interesting conversation!  Something bizarre
> happened to me when I started
> looping in the free improv context. Before that, I
> had played mostly in 4/4,
> 3/4, and 6/8 time because of my jazz background (I
> love 6/8 by the
> way....Footprints, is a good example), and in the
> early 90's when I was
> playing in a power trio I was doing very technical
> progressive rock
> originals in 7/8, 11/8, etc.  However, when I
> started improv looping, one
> night I realized that I had stopped thinking about
> time signature, entirely.
> I merely sat down, started playing and whatever
> happened, happened....in the
> case where I was looping repeatable rhythms, I had
> no idea was time
> signature I was playing in, and I didn't really
> care...it was un-important.
> Then a percussionist started playing with me and he
> suggested how hard it
> was to play to my rhythmic loops, and I gathered
> this some nights when I'd
> look over at him, and he would be counting under his
> breath or had a puzzled
> look on his face. It turned out that I was looping
> in very odd time
> signatures, such as 13/8, 11/8, 9/8, or what he
> humorously suggested one
> time, 11 1/2 / 8, which would be 23/8.  I had no
> idea I was doing this, but
> I was able to loop this way and improvise and solo
> over my material with no
> problem. But it was killing Vinnie!  On the flip
> side, if you played a 13/8
> progression to me and told me to improvise over it,
> it would somehow seem
> harder, because then I would be conscious of the odd
> time signature and
> would be trying to mold to it...yet when I
> unconsciously loop my own odd
> time signatures, all difficulties disappear....I
> don't mold to the rhythm,
> but become a part of it. It is almost as if I obtain
> this holistic
> perception of the odd time signature...feeling it as
> a whole rather than
> trying to analyze it's pieces.
> 
> Kris
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: <johnsrude@peak.org>
> To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
> Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 3:03 PM
> Subject: Re: Maybe why Avante-garde looping in US...
> 
> 
> >> By the way, if soloing over 7/8 seems daunting 
> write me off list and
> >> I'll
> >> show you some really simple exercises
> >> to get free in that rhythmic
> space........................you'll see that
> >> it
> >> is actually no more complicated than playing in
> 4/4..............you just
> >> haven't done it since you were a kid like they
> have there.
> >
> > You can actually get the hang of odd meter really
> fast if you don't count
> > in
> > numbers but in syllables, which takes advantage of
> our speech centers.
> > Just
> > about all European odd meters can be broken down
> into groups of two and
> > three
> > beats.  For the two beats say "Taki" and for the
> three beats say "Gamela".
> > So
> > for two seven beat patterns:
> >
> > Taki-Taki-Gamela, Taki-Taki-Gamela,...
> > or
> > Gamela-Taki-Taki, Gamela-Taki-Taki,...
> >
> > If you ever hear Garaj Mahal perform "Poodle
> Factory" live, you'll hear
> > this
> > to hilarious effect.  They get the _whole_
> audience to sing along at the
> > maximum physically possible tempo the following
> loop:
> >
> > Poodle poodle factory, poodle factory
> > Poodle poodle factory, poodle factory
> > Poodle poodle factory, poodle factory
> > Poodle factory, poodle factory, poodle factory
> >
> > which a musicologist might call three bars of 11/4
> followed by three bars
> > of 5/4.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Kevin
> > www.TheNettles.com
> >
> >
> >
> 
> 
> 


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