Re: Composing/Planning the Looping Fun

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

Step 1. First advice here: Know Music!

Step 2. To break this down into an action plan, here are some points:

- Know what chords are usually used in a each key.
- Know what makes a melody work over a certain chord change structure.
- Know rhythm. Learn what it sounds like and how to play any beat over
any other beat.

Step 3. Analyze "breaking the rules".
One early famous example is how Lennon/McCartney used to suddenly
throw in a minor chord where classic music theory would predict a
major chord (and this of cause implying different song harmony and
melody playing at that particular part of the song). Another example
might be Miles Davis well known trick to "imagine the song going in a
a different key and play according to that instead of the actual key".

Step 4.
Solve the technical challenges of live looping; I mean things like
figuring out what part to start with in order to build more parts into
the same loop (or as other parallel loops?). Maybe a bass line works
under two different melodies? Fine, then you may first make a loop of
this bass line and then either play those two melodies after each
other over the ever spinning bass line loop... or you could first copy
the bass line loop into a new loop slot and overdub the two melodies
one at each copy of the bass line loop. Such a decision depends on
what you're going to do later in the arrangement.

Step X - variation:
"Unlearn" the above step-for-step approach and try using it for
improvising "instant composition".

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se
www.perboysen.com
www.looproom.com internet music hub



On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 8:46 AM, Steve Crumpler <yared0319@gmail.com> 
wrote:
> So as this is my first post, I'll offer a quick introduction.  For the 
> past
> year-and-a-half has been learning how to play the violin (electric).
>  Originally my goal was just to learn how to play the violin, but with
> success I quickly expanded on that.  I decided to plan out how to create 
> a
> solo electric violin looping performance.  That's what I've been 
> focusing on
> (as much as I can with a full-time job) for the past few months.  Also, 
> I'm
> a software engineer.  One thing to know about software engineers is that 
> we
> spend months planning software in detail before we get to the part where 
> we
> implement it.  A lot of creative thought goes into planning out
> elegantly-written software.  I believe it is similar to planning out an
> elegant looping structure/song.
> So, hopefully my background will help explain the seeming oddness of my
> question ...
> How do you guys compose/plan your songs?  For the instrument-based 
> loopers
> out there, do you write sheet music for the loop and free-play sections 
> and
> have some scheme for organizing it or do you simply play and improvise 
> till
> you have something that works?  My problem would be remembering exactly 
> what
> I played from one day to the next.  Maybe it's because I'm so new to
> playing, though, that I don't quite have the ability to keep it all in my
> head the same way every time.
> Hopefully you guys have already solved my problem and can fill me in, 
> but if
> not here's what I've been thinking ... First I play around with some 
> rhythms
> and melodies on the piano (USB keyboard attached to PC so I can play and
> take notes).  Once I have some sections that I like I write the loop
> sections to sheet music using LilyPond.  However, that only gives the the
> independent section, not the whole song or when to press the pedals to
> start/stop/overdub a loop.  That is where I've been putting a lot of 
> thought
> lately.
> So with that problem in mind I had some inspiration from my CS 
> education.  I
> can think of a loop-based song like a finite state machine (FSM), which 
> is
> simply a way to describe the states a machine (in this case a loop-based
> song) can be in and how it transitions between the states.  The only way 
> to
> change which loops are playing (0 to *) is to press a foot pedal, 
> similar to
> how the only way to change a FSM state is with a transition.  With that I
> can diagram out my loop-based song, with each loop start/end/overdub, 
> effect
> on/off, effect settings, etc. to the very end.  I think this is flexible
> enough to be useful for mapping out any loop-based song.
> Thoughts?