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Looper's Delight
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chuck wrote, among other things: "> I'd just like to thank you for your inspired and intelligent > thoughts. As a trained musician, I looked down on 'Techno' and for >years > I resisted the technology. About a year ago out of curiosity I bought > Reason. Now have thousands and thousands of dollars tied up in this > powerful musical venue. What a sweet letter, Chuck. Thank you very much for the acknolwedegements. You seriously brought an appreciative smile to my face and made my day, today. I have a similar story. I have been a professional gigging/touring and session percussionist/drummer for a very long time and, started seriously loopoing digitally in 1995 and, right at the cusp of the millenium change I invested in a computer music making studio (PC based) and just threw myself into making electronic music. I just became obsessed about it all, from live looping to computer assisted sound design and composition. The ability to sculpt musical sound and found objects in the computer is just unending and for a while I considered myself as much of a Timbralist as a Rhythmatist (as I'd always thought of myself in years prior). I almost completely quit drumming at that time................really only concentrating on frame drumming for several years and only playing percussion or trapset drumming when I was paid a lot of money to do it in recording sessions or short tours (or during drum lessons which I continued to teach). After a 7 year immersion in that world, I suddenly finding myself returning to the world of acoustic music with brand new ears. I've recently fallen in love with my first great love, the drumset and I have been learning as much as I can about trumpet, fretless bass and a whole host of zither styled instruments lately. When Woodstockhausen was lamentably rained out, I found myself with a day off for the first time in the longest time (I"m my own boss and it's tough for me to walk away from the office as it's my house). I spent an entire evening tuning my Autoharp, my Bowed Psaltery and my Marxaphone (the latter to a favorite Indian Rag: Bhairav ---- 1, b2, nat3, 4, 5, b6, nat 7, 8va) and I've been loving moving my new acoustic Shertler convertable pickup from instrument to instrument. All wonderfully acoustic, but I've been throwing it through stomp box pedals and can't wait to record some so I can get all those juicy Cycling 74 Hipno and Pluggo plugins going on the sounds. I've also found that I really enjoy trying to make acoustic instruments sound electronic with acoustic methods instead of electronic ones. I've even started working on an idea I've had for a long time: an all acoustic drumset that sounds as if it was an electronic drumset. I figured that so many people are trying to make electronics sound 'real', 'organic' or like acoustic instruments so I'd go in the exact opposite direction. I've been buying really strange one of a kind proprietary effects cymbals at NAMM and the PASIC convention, where the manufacturers trot out their latest R&D exercises hoping that the notoriously conservative drumset world will go for these new ideas. They rarely do go for it, so they always sell these prototypes on the last afternoon of these conventions. I've amassed a really cool collection of smallish (13" and under) cymbals that sound as if they have processing on them. My wife the other day discovered all these cool sounds that you can make by holding a small Revere ware cooking pot lid and hitting it's wooden handle. We got at least three sounds that are remarkably similar to Roland TR-808 sounds. Additionally, I've been treating drums and cymbals by putting different kinds of chains and pieces of metal on them to cause what I call 'acoustic distortion'. I have a little rack that holds three little custom fiberglass tom toms that I converted to 6", 8", and 10" 'Jungle' snare drums. I play these with little teeny 10" meinl hi hat cymbals that sound like they are normal hi hats pitched up on a sampler with a little 14" Pure cussion flat drum, tuned low with thick black naugahyde glued to both sides and kluged to an LP Gajate cowbell footpedal bracket. This left side of my drumset is tuned to sound like a breakbeat drumset pitched up from 120 BPM in a sampler to 160 BPM. The right side of the drumset has two terrible and very low pitched 16" 1960's Japanese crash cymbals (when the Japanese made truly terrible cymbals...........which I have grown to love because they are so idiosyncratic sounding) put together loosely like hi hats. The kick drum is a huge 14" X 16" kick drum (ala Bonham) tuned really, really low and flabby........the snare is a really deep 8" X 14" Ludwig Coliseum snare drum that I have tuned very low and with really loose snares. This side of the drumset is the same drumset tuned down an octave so that I have my double speed "JUNGLE" kit and a half speed "TRIP HOP" drumset. The whole thing takes up very little space (just a little larger than a typical 4 piece drumset) and sounds cool. Now if I could just get some looping gigs where they'll let me set up for two hours..............lol.