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Re: Why...?




On Oct 21, 2011, at 10:45 PM, william middlemiss wrote:

Why do you 'loop'? What got you started on this path?

My first electronic instrument was an Ensoniq ESQ-1. It was one of the very first workstation synths. You could record MIDI sequences and by pressing the button for the sequence it would play and loop it until you pressed the next button, and then it would move to that one and play it until you pressed another sequence's button. I didn't really realize this was "looping," and never really performed in front of others, but enjoyed creating loops and playing them in sequence like that.

I saw the virtuosic guitarist Phil Keaggy in the early 80s looping in a live concert, probably with an EDP, and was completely blown away by what he was doing, and this always stuck in my mind as something I wish I could do.

A couple of years ago I started looping vocally as an extension of my a cappella recording habit of overdubbing my own voice to make arrangements of songs. The challenge for me was figuring out a way to do it live on stage!

I think it takes a certain kind of ego to want to hear your own voice in many harmonic and contrapuntal layers. (I once dubbed my looping system as an "ego enhancement device.")

Also, I got tired of trying to find singers that could perform at the level that I wanted/needed for vocal jazz. So, I started expending energy arranging and singing as a solo vocal looping artist. And I fell in love with it and can't stop!

Was it a mechanism for solo performance? to record a vamp?

Up 'til now, I've been more interested in arranging complete songs than simply improvising or singing over a vamp. But now I'm thinking of simplifying my process and experimenting with ambient music. I've never been really interested in ambient improvisation because it comes so naturally to me, and I tend to convince myself that something has to be hard to be worth doing. But I'm realizing the expressive possibilities, and hoping to glean some techniques from you all to make it more enjoyable and interesting to me, and therefore to an audience.

I may also explore looping as a song-writing medium as well.

A compositional device, a new avenue of expression? (repetition as compositional device?)

Yeah, I'm heading this way, I think. I want to learn ways to use pitch shifting of different loops and tracks to create harmonic structures.

An 'artistic statement' in itself? as if to say "I DONT NEED NO STINKIN BAND!"

There's definitely an aspect of this - If I cant find singers to sing with me, then I will sing all the $%!#@ parts myself!


With me, it's been all of the above, and I've jumped among 7 or 8 devices along the way.

How about you?

I have pretty much exclusively used Mobius as a standalone platform for live looping, first on a PC laptop, and now on my Macbook Pro with a Firewire interface and cheap microphone, sometimes using some compression and a tube pre-amp. Recently, I have begun using a VoiceLive floor unit for harmonizations, octave drop for bass, and other effects.

However, I have recently started to use my iPhone to loop with an iRig interface. I may be moving that direction, processing the vocals first with the VoiceLive, once I simplify my looping process and move towards ambient. I dunno. We'll see.

Peace and adventure,
Michael Carlson (TripleOhNine)