Re: anti-looper bigots / Miles & Teo

[looppool@cruzio.com]

the Rev Fevers wrote:
"I wonder how they felt when they later found out that he and Teo Marcero
employed a lot of looping in the over all creation of Bitches Brew,etc.
Speaking of that, here is some inspirational reading.  Enjoy...

http://milesite.blogspot.com/2009/02/teo-macero-on-producing-miles-davis.html


thanks for that, Rev.    On that same site is a wonderful interview with
Herbie Hancock about his time playing with Miles with some cool anecdotes.


Andy you know,  I"ve been thinking about this:

A lot of people have credited Miles (under the influence of Bill Evans)
for ushering in the
modal approach and, effectively putting a period on the post-bop movement.

His think was that is the band played modally that the soloist would then
have more freedom
to control the harmony (whereas before,  it was always the chordalists who
dictated the harmony to the soloists)

In a way,  by introducing tape loops on 'In a Silent Way'  (neglected as
the predecessor and I feel, the superior record to the more famous
"Bitches Brew")
he was doing the same thing to the percussionists.

By introducing a static loop that held down the groove,  in essence,  the
percussionists and drummers were free to explore more.

You really hear this too as the fusion movement came out of these records:
   percussion
became vastly more adventuresome,   especially in terms of the varied
timbres that multi-percussionists began to bring into the music.   
Texture became as important as rhythm or
style.

That's one of the things that I try to explain when I go to the fairly
conservative Percussion Arts Seminar annual conventions (called PASIC).   
Most people assume that a constantly repeating thing is a limitation, when
in reality it's amazingly liberating as a multi-instrumentalist or as
a multi-percussionist.

Typically, as a groove oriented drummer for most of my life, I have had to
hold down the fort with a groove.    I could hear amazing things in my
head as embellishments to the rhythm but , as I always told my students:
'There is the groove and there is commentary on the groove
and when you are commenting on the groove you are not playing the groove.'
  The only way to get around this successfully is to pay a groove for long
enough that when you veer from it with a fill or embellishment, that the
listener hears the groove continuing do to the depth of it's trance.

In successful pop drumming, as a rule,  you tend not to want to use any
more than a 1/16 ratio
of fill to groove.     And that's playing a lot of fills...........(that's
a one bar fill every four bars or
up to a one bar fill every sixteen bars,  which is pretty over the top in
a pop song).

So, yeah to Miles and Teo!!!!!      original jazz loopers!