Re: City Lights Music Festival and its comparison to a loop fest

[Matt Davignon <mattdavignon@gmail.com>]

Hmmm, I think we need to accept that some things are different than other things, and that's ok. For example, if you see an apple, and you really like oranges, you could tell the apple that it has seeds, and a skin, and is the reproductive part of the plant, which makes it pretty much the same thing as an orange. However, the apple has been an apple for a while, and understands apple-ness pretty well. However, nothing that the apple thinks should prevent you from enjoying oranges. 

In a way that "jungle music" wasn't necessarily made in jungles, and experimental music isn't the result of people in lab coats following the scientific method, "Live Looping" for many people means a very specific interaction between instrument and technology - where the performer is both generating the instrumental sounds live and sampling them live. 

Yes, a DJ can can create loops in real time, but more often than not, the music itself was created by someone other than the DJ. In my experience, about 9 out of 10 DJs are not composers or instrumentalists while they are DJ'ing. They are playing other people's music, and making only tiny changes to completed pieces of music to blend them together into a longer set. The value of a DJ set is the value of a curator - the DJ goes out and finds good music that you haven't heard yet and plays it. The DJs who compose are few and far between - the ones who actually create original music are even fewer and more far in between. (Those such as RJD2 often get credit for composing something when all they did was loop someone else's music and put a extra drum beat on it.)

Sorry - got off on a tangent there. In short, many things that use loops are not "live looping". You can still like whatever you want to like. 

-- 
Matt Davignon
mattdavignon@gmail.com
www.ribosomemusic.com
Podcast! http://ribosomematt.podomatic.com

On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 8:25 AM, Tyler <programmer651@comcast.net> wrote:

Hello, everybody! I know it's kind of too late, but I want to post about the City Lights
Music Festival for future reference. This year, it was yesterday and today. I was there yesterday, and I
have recordings. Remember when I said that a Grand Rapids, Michigan loop fest would be amazing?
Well, it's not really touted as a loop fest, but the City Lights Music Festival (touted as an
electronic music festival) has a lot of qualities that a loop fest has. There's something many
people don't realize; you say the biggest city in Michigan is Detroit, and that's right! But Grand
Rapids is the SECOND biggest. It's a growing city, and we hope more events can take place
there; maybe a real loop fest! Who knows? But the City Lights Music Festival frequently
made use of something that is very similar to live looping. Most of the samples that the festival DJ'S
used were prerecorded, but if the DJ'S just put on the music and left it alone, the sample would just
play. But the DJ'S kept hitting repeat buttons on specific parts of the samples, making it
"live" looping, so to speak. I don't have my recording of the CLMF online, but you can find out more about
it here:
http://www.citylightsmusicfestival.com
Tyler Z