Looper's Delight Archive Top (Search)
Date Index
Thread Index
Author Index
Looper's Delight Home
Mailing List Info

[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Date Index][Thread Index][Author Index]

Re: Dig if u will my research paper(liveloopinggenre)



> And as I asked above, is that a description of your music or your role in
> it? To me it sounds equivalent to saying "andybutler--guitarist" or
> "andybutler--synthesist" or "andybutler--vocalist".
>
> kim

...put another way - is there such a thing as 'drums music' - is music that
features drums a genre? It's instantly recogniseable as music with drums 
in,
it's got a following (I know a lot of drummers who buy CDs based on who the
drummer is on it), and there are festivals built around it (Rhythm Sticks 
in
London every year - featuring everything from solo tabla to The Stewart
Copeland big band, via gamalan... is it a genre? no. does it work as a
marketing tool/catch-all term for promo purposes? yes.

you lot are so 'modern' - arguing about this stuff - it's all good - if it
works, use it, if it don't work for you, leave it. Gimme the po-mo version 
-
if there's a looping festival, I'm up for playing, if someone asks what I
do, I'll say I'm a bassist, who plays solo sometimes - that usually leads
onto questions about what on earth I'm doing playing solo bass, so I 
explain
the looping thang... I don't need to describe myself as a looper, unless
it's offered to me as a category, and don't really mind either way. having
said that, there doesn't really seem to be any pattern to how people 
connect
with what I do - many obviously don't connect with it at all. some like the
solo bass angle, some like the looping, others (shock! horror!) actually
like the freakin' music and don't care how it's done... it's all good, I
tell yer...

Semantically, I can't see 'live looping' fitting any common useage of the
word Genre. however, if it works for you, go with it. If it gets the press
interested in your music, WTF - use it! It doesn't really say anything 
about
the style of the music - what do Andre and Howie Day have in common, other
than two legs? I'd say the guitar is probably a stronger link than looping,
but either way, the crossover in their audience is going to be based on the
broadness of the taste of the listener, not in their love for or loathing 
of
looping....

Geoff made some allusion to qualifying as a live looping artist being based
on the amount of looping going on, rather than using it as an effect (my
interpretation, perhaps), which seems a little pedantic - does frisell do
enough to be classed as a looper? He's looping most of the time, you just
can't tell, it's so seemless and so constantly evolving.. looping or no
looping? who cares. He doesn't need it to market what he does, or explain
what he does, he just does...

by all means, discuss where you're coming from, but either way, if it works
give it try... If you can find an angle that gets you heard in your town,
that's great! And if you can somehow piggy on someone else's work, or do
what Rick's done and pitch loads of fairly unconnected artists in a looping
festival stylee in a way that seems to work, great. If you hit a ceiling
with that, try something else - go with bass festivals, or experimental
music festivals, or pop festivals, or 25th anniversary of whatever
festivals.

It's weird, it seems like you're arguing diametrically opposed views for 
the
same reasoning... Kim's right in one sense, that trying to define what the
style of 'live-looping' is will probably result in a view of it as being
vaguely new age, vaguely ambient... the sort of stuff that lazy journos
describe as 'frippertronics'. However, Rick's all inclusive approach to
putting on his festivals is trying to do the same thing - present looping 
as
a very inclusive approach to music, in much the same way that a forward
thinking guitar fest will put on some widdly stuff along side an acoustic
strummer to show the breadth of what guitar can do... So in one sense 
you're
all pushing in the same direction.

big love,

Steve
www.stevelawson.net