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Looper's Delight
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On 17 mar 2006, at 02.55, Dennis Montgomery wrote: > I've been doing a lot of looping this year since I went stereo > with a 2nd EDP+. I'm on one of my existential 'why do we loop' > trips again. This time though, I'm not asking 'why we loop' but > 'what are we trying to say' when we create a looping piece? My > recent looping pieces seem to be defined by the texture of the > sound I put into them. The texture determines the mood. After I > build it up then I'll try to contrast it with a new loop. After > building that up, I'll return to the initial loop like a theme > restatement thing. The whole process though is very abstract, the > meaning is defined and always shifting with whatever happy > accidents occur in the loop itself. > > How are others doing this? Before you start building a loop, do > you have a preconceived idea of what the loop should express or do > you just let the sound of the loop guide you? Those out there who > perform for an audience, do you ever introduce a loop like, "this > is a loop about <my dog><France><groundhog day><whatever>"? One of > the exciting things I'm finding about looping is it's a whole new > musical form of communication with a new language of techniques and > a new way of saying things. I think that live looping music needs to sort with a musical style or a certain personal artistic expression and not present itself as simply "live looping music". That's because live looping is a performance technique as well as an instrument while it's the music that is an art form. If you sing you should of course present the tunes with the song title, addressing the lyrics the common way. But if your looping music is instrumental you have to respect that people do experience music differently in a deeply personal way. So the reason you can't really tell a listener "what the music is about" is that the music is always about the specific listener. And who are you to tell him about that? Then, speaking about instrumental music, there are many "theoretical concept" techniques to create strong instrumental music with a "content". These methods are almost the same for all performing artists, musicians as well as actors. You have to create the emotions inside yourself that goes with what you want to express musically. Every performer has to build up and constantly work on his personal "library of emotions", often by connecting to memories from his/her own life. But it may also work for some people to simply make up typical emotional settings as mental images. The trick to make it work in performance is to keep it all handy for "switching on". Applying this technique to your instrumental music performing it may make sense for you to think about "my dog", but you should not tell the audience about that, just use it as a shortcut to get into the right mood ;-) Finally, live looping music is different in one way. It does present the audience with the process in which the music is being created. It doesn't, like music performed by en ensemble of simultaneously playing musicians, present a finished piece of music from the first beat after the count-in. So the "timing" takes on a new meaning for a performing looper. It's not only about "tight playing" but also about being clear about how you present the layers when you build up the musical piece. You may have to think a little extra about leading the listeners so they will be able to follow you through the sonic terrain you are about to conquer. BTW, here's an interesting web page I found on theoretical strategies for improvising instrumental music: http://www.essl.at/bibliogr/improvisation-e.html Greetings from Sweden Per Boysen www.boysen.se (Swedish) www.looproom.com (international) http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast? id=128679560&s=143456