Re: What's your looper control strategy?

[mark francombe <mark@markfrancombe.com>]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 9:15 AM, Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com> wrote:

And, for some odd reason...........I find that hand controlling of things just looks better on stage
than tap dancing on pedals.   I don't know why that is, but I've asked several non-performers about that
and they agree...

.....why would that be?     I suppose it's because our hands are so much more controllable than our feet
and most of civilization was built using the hands, as opposed to the feet.

I think this totally depends, personally I think people using weird hand help devices or add-ons looks cool as hell, but then, Im a gear freak... 

But for most people its the music that counts and playing (or controlling) music from a pocket calculator, or a plastic talking duck or an iPhone or an IR sensor beam, is just gimmickry.

I can understand that if you care that the people who are watching you loop KNOW that you created all this noise from scratch, no backing tracks, that maybe using a hand held (visible) device, will make it more obvious to the audience. Where a subtle click of a footswitch will not be noticed.

However, I come from a world that doesnt care about whether the music is totally live or not, and I certainly dont care if people didnt get that I created it all from scratch. If they want to go home thinking I made some cool music from pre-recorded loops, that OK by me!

I think a better way of looking at it is what interface works for you, and does this interface create new musical possibilities. I think that the iphone/pad does definately add some new things, but weirdly, my experiments with an XY controller in TouchOSC, mapped to various paremeters in Live and AudioMulch, actually resulted in me buying 2 Kaos Pads, rather than going the software route, I still like to experiment with software, but prefer making music with hardware.

As for tap dancing pedals not looking good... maybe not, but falling to your knees and manipulating those pedals by hand (Like Radiohead and numerous noise bands I love) looks cool as hell...

Anyway, I still find that semi-naked dancing girls is by far the best thing to invest in in terms of visual entertainment during a looping show..


:-)

Mark


-- 
Mark Francombe

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