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RE: Sorting out the good stuff



Funny, I've been reading "Arcana", a book of musicians writing about music 
edited by Zorn.  Frith's entry consists of a compendium of diary entries, 
in one of which he talks about how critics of improvisational music 
sometimes complain they have to sit through boring passages before things 
get exciting. But the notion that the exciting parts can be identified in 
advance, practiced, and focused on in performance is precisely what makes 
for clichés.

This may differ from what you're asking about, in the sense that your 
looped recordings may not be absolutely "real-time".  If they are like my 
similar trove, they are a mix of the real-time on-the-fly and the "Ah, 
that sounds cool, let us now search a bit for the next way to monkey with 
it, and then add or subtract or whatever accordingly" approach.  In the 
latter case one is already editing, maybe heavily.

I've paraphrased Frith here, but his conclusion is pretty much "the rough 
spots seem somehow necessary to explain the good bits."

Inasmuch as I too have a lot of loops on a hard drive that I occasionally 
call up for editing and assembling into larger pieces, I'll be very 
curious to hear what people say. I've spent some time importing Mobius 
loops into A'ton Live and using Live's kit of warping tools to make 
variations. I have rarely found the results remarkable, but I chalk that 
up to a lack of time spent REALLY learning Live and focusing on this 
technique.  

Hal Dean



-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Cheli-Colando [mailto:billowhead@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 10:35 PM
To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject: Sorting out the good stuff

A few days back I think, someone mentioned that they play a ton and then 
go back and sort out the good stuff from all the hours of sound to make an 
album (or something to that effect).  I was wondering how they managed to 
do that (sorry, can't remember who said that or when exactly).

I've got hundreds of hours of looped recordings, some an hour or more 
single take.  And there are some truly amazing spots in there.  And there 
are some VERY rough spots as well, things that embarrass me me when I say 
I'm a guitarist rough.  But I find, I have a really hard time excising the 
'good' bits from the flow of things because the rough spots seem somehow 
necessary to explain the good bits.  Or finding when exactly to come in to 
the good stuff.  Edit too soon and it seems kind of lost and aimless, edit 
too late and you wonder that anyone would ever listen past the first 
minute of nonsense.

So I'm just wondering, for all the people who do the play and play and 
play and grab the good bits later, how do you decide?  Do you have a 
strategy or plan in place before you listen?

Just curious and not at all sure its really a serious question or just 
rhetorical but I will throw it out anyway.

Kevin

--
Till now you seriously considered yourself to be the body and to have a 
form. That is the primal ignorance which is the root cause of all trouble.

- Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950)

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