letting the drummer hear your loop live

["Rick Walker/Loop.pooL" <GLOBAL@cruzio.com>]

Travis wrote,

'If everyone's supposed to be keeping time for themselves, why is it so
particularly important for the drummer to be able to hear the loop?'


Are you being facetious here or have you not played a lot of ensemble work?

*****************************************

If the loop is static,   the drummer must play to it, physically.   If the
drummer can't hear the loop
it causes the proverbial train wreck.

I took a looper to a non traditional Kirtan that I played at yesterday:
two singers singing hindu, urdu and
arabic spiritual chants accompanied by drums (me) with the audience being
the performance, singing
call and response chants.

Singers couldn't hear the loops and I killed it immediately and played
acoustic for the whole show.
I would have brought more drums if I had known this as I was counting on
layering a lot of bell
and 'riding' rhythms to play over, but we had an incredible time of it.

**************************************

Maybe it's time now for Steve Lawson to chime in about the nature of
stretching time rhythmically whilst using
loops live.     He inspired me to really get into the whole Jam Karet 
("time
is rubber" in Indonesian)
mentality when I'm doing a purely solo show.   Right now, he and Debhashish
Battycharya (the master Indian
classical slide guitarist who just got the Shakti gig with John McLaughlin
gig or so I'm told) are the only
people that I'd have confidence using these techniques with live while 
using
loops.   It is a cool technique and
used minimally can also help one adjust to a 'lumpy' loop.

Steve,  if you are not too busy..............you want to take over here?
Maybe you could suggest a track from one of your CDs that
illustrates this technique that I"ve seen you use so many times in
performance.

yours, Rick