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Looper's Delight
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It's funny that I have experienced the opposite issue! ;-)) At many gigs people that come there to watch expect those on the stage to do a lot more hands-on with the laptop. For this reason I try to kick off certain looper comands from laptop keys instead of instantly doing it "on the side" by a floor pedal while playing a physical instrument up front. Just to add a little laptop mangling to the show. There's also another problem for us public performers in live looping and that is that your second instrument - the looper - in the perception of the audience has a musical latency that may vary from two seconds to several minutes. I like to make sure the audience understands that I play two instruments, the one they an see (guitar, sax, flute, gongs etc) and the looper. If they see me kicking pedals like a maniac while playing flute and the flute just sounds normal, they are in fact watching me playing the looper and the stuff I do then will not be heard in the music until the loop returns back again. At some concerts I have, mistakenly, thought that "people here are not that stupid, they certainly know I'm looping live all improvised..." but then someone who liked the show comes up afterward with funny questions like "impressing how you can remember to follow those complex backtracks and hit the key changes like that" ;-)) So as far as it doesn't turn you into a lame school teacher clown you may educate the audience a little. The public picture of looping as "cheating the band effect" has been mentioned in this thread. My way to fight back this prejudice is to rarely use more than one instrument in one piece. I rather play around with the looper to extend the sound of the physical instrument I play in that song. Then I may change physical instrument for the next song. If looping in duo or trio I may change instrument during a piece though, because then it is a way for me to adapt to the collective music evolution process. --> Related: Generally, improvising musician have always had the same problem with the audience not understanding what they are doing on stage. There are so many times, after a gig with totally improvised music, that people refuse to believe that the music they just heard was improvised. They kind of go "but hey - that can't be improvised 'cause I heard many melodies in there and I tell you heard the piano player change chord where the melody turned and the bass player too...." It's just impossible to argue with them so many times it's just simpler to keep improvising but pretend you are playing compositions - because no one would believer the truth anyway ;-)) Greetings from Sweden Per Boysen www.boysen.se www.perboysen.com On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 1:23 AM, Bob Amstadt <bob@amstadt.com> wrote: > Personally, if I'm going to a live performance, I do like the performers >to > interact with the audience. I don't mind the knob twiddling as long as >the > performer does acknowledge the existence of the audience. People >generally > do expect more at a live performance than just a replay of the recording. > Honestly, that is one of the reasons that I don't go to many stadium >shows. > Interaction between the artists and the audience makes the evening much >more > fun. > > I have noted that my favorite looping performers have altered their >styles > over time to include a greater interaction with the audience. They >still do > the same amount of knob twiddling, but use simple techniques of eye >contact > and stories between pieces to draw the audience in to what they are >doing.