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Looper's Delight
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On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, Andy Owens wrote: > Rick et al, > > I just wanted to say again thanks for taking time, time is all we really >have, taking time to write such a good post about percussion and how it >might relate to static percussion loops in looping. > > In building live song track, the way I mostly loop, I can either record >short two or four measure grooves or play them in my mini vdrum setup, >and since your post been thinking and listening closer and I noticed that >if I just record my mediocre live drumming, it is a weird combination of >having a drum groove thats not perfect but gets repeated perfectly, it is >really cool hadnt thought of that but it really makes for a much better >feel on the overall song. > > Ya'll other genuises, thanks too. Soon I'll be brave enough to show yall >a loop song!!! > > Andy the O Thanks, Andy, and you really hit the nail on the head for me: I've seen hundreds of loopers play at all the festivals I've produced and in touring in many countries in my life and it may just be my aesthetic, but I find it far more engaging to me for a guitarist or other melodic looper to make their own percussion loops with whatever is at hand (their own instrument, incidental percussion, small drum sets (and remember you need only a credible kick sound, a credible snare and a credible hi hat sound which can result in a very, very small drum set) or even electronic drums). It's funny about looping but I've come to believe this. If you are musical and relatively accurate and fairly minimal, the brain 'buys' a single bar rhythmic loop as a coherent world against which you can layer lots of interesting things. The second you add more than a couple of bars, the idiosyncracies of either quantized programming or imperfect performance become glaring and people fixate on the artificialness (and the lack of perfection). I once, purposefully made a terribly lump beat box loop at PASIC (I've already mentioned it here, I believe but it bears mentioning again) enough to get a funny audible groan out of the famous session drummer, Bill Ward, sitting in the front row. I did it, though, to demonstrate that I could then layer four or five more acapella tracks in such a way that I could make the audience suspend their reasonable disbelief and 'buy' the loop as a groove. I did this by layering long envelope events that 'smeared' across the lumpy boundary of the event. The reasonable suspension of disbelief that all human beings have capacity for is why looping works at all, in my opinion. Let's face it: we are doing a very, very artificial thing when we loop live and we are trying to do it in such a way that nobody pays much attention to it's artificiality (unless we are slicing and dicing and getting jiggy with an abstract concept, in which the artificiality of our processing is precisely the effect we want to have on the audience). Consequently, in performance after performance at the loopfestivals I have watched the audiences responses and, invariably, the musicians who are creating their own rhythmic/percussion tracks just seem to have a better response to what their doing sometimes DESPITE the fact that they are using extremely naive rhythmic concepts and techniques. It's one thing if it's being put on a recording. Another, when it is in front of a live audience. As an example, I love and support Luis Angulo to do anything he wants to do with his Adrenallin in performance, but personally, I love it the most when he's not using programmed beats but playing percussion himself. He's one funky motherfunker, in my opinion and the visceral quality of what he loops, percussively is always outstanding. We're looping so it's artificial as hell, but , to me, it feels more 'real' to do it that way. Here's to illusion!!! respectfully, rick walker