Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
Amidst all the Fripp babblings, this caught my eye: At 9:52 AM 12/18/96, T.W. Hartnett wrote: >As far as some people's expressed concern on the "static" nature of >Fripp's looping work, I think it's a somewhat unavoidable part of the >process he uses in creating the loops. A lot of Torn's work is edited in >the studio, which gives a lot more flexibility in arrangement and >dynamics. Given that most people have only one loop device in their rig, >you're going to be limited to adding information into the loop. Even if >you've got an Echoplex, the Undo feature isn't going to allow you >introduce a radical, appealing change to what you're doing. It just lets >you remove the last layer or two, depending on how much memory you've got >installed. That's not much of a compositional manuever, and unless >you've specifically planned an overdub to be removed for effect, I doubt >that Undo really functions as other than a "Whoops!" button for most >people. I avoid using it because maybe one in 20 loops strike me as >fatally flawed. I've already confessed that I know practically zipp about fripp, but I do know a bit about undo and non-static loops. When we talk about looping and its techniques, we are really discussing a musical instrument and an amorphous set of techniques to employ upon it. We may even be talking about a whole form of music. What happens when a new device is introduced to our vocabulary? What is a function like Undo good for? How might we use it? Is it really, as you say, a "Whoops button for must people?" Are we most people? How many rhetorical questions can I ask in a row? Think about this: When a musician first learns how to play a G major scale, do they immediately unleash a torrent of hip altered-G post-bob lines? Certainly not. If they ever do, its because some clues, instruction, examples, and inspirations pointed them along that path. And what about the path? Who or what inspired the examples? What were the examples that led to inspiration? Guitars were first amplified so that they could be heard over the louder instruments in the increasingly larger swing bands of the 30's and 40's. Made life easier for those who's thumbs weren't as callous-endowed as Freddie Green's. People at the time wondered what the point was since banjo's were loud enough, and served the same rhythmic purpose as guitars. Those weren't the folks who brought us the electric guitar lexicon we have today! Fortunately, we had people like Charlie Christian, Les Paul, Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, and a thousand others showing the way. The Robert Fripps and David Torns don't pop out of nowhere. They absorb the existing knowledge and add unique pieces of their own, broadening the whole. Looping, as a musical language, is barely in its infancy. The Jamman is about 3 years old. The Echoplex's 2 year anniversary recently passed. Previous versions of the echoplex are maybe 5-6 years old. Throw in assorted delays and tape systems and we can scrape together 20-30 years of rather meager historical pickings. Do any of us really know how to use these devices yet? Most of the looping vocabulary is only just being created and explored, and we can certainly look forward to many revolutions and innovations in the future. Those will come by us taking a step further than those who came before, and seeing possibilities where others saw limitations. You haven't owned your echoplex for very long; none of us really has. Same with Jamman's and hard disks and all the rest. If you keep at it, you will keep learning and developing new techniques for a long time. Hopefully, we can come together and share our discoveries and develop the art together. Most importantly, before we decide that a technique is too limited for our needs, or that we can't do what we like with the available tools, we need to look up a bit a see if maybe others haven't already shown the way. You've decided that undo is only useful for fixing mistakes. It is useful for that. Creatively applied, it's also useful for much more. I'm certainly no master, but I've discovered some uses that I think are pretty interesting. A dense loop can be reduced to its simpler beginnings fairly quickly with successive applications of Undo. One thing I like to do is to start with a simple looping theme, and overdub layers to give it a particular character. I'll then undo the layers to get back to the basic theme. Then I'll start overdubbing again to build the loop in a new way. Undo it again and rebuild. Sometimes I'll undo the layers slowly, sometimes quickly. Sometimes I won't go all the way back, leaving an element in for the new loop. I'm purely an improv player, but this seems like a useful compositional device to me. And in fact, I know of people who have composed that way. You are seeking ways to make loops that are not static, that can change quickly. Undo on the echoplex offers something here, but there are other ways. Feedback control is the most obvious. Turn the feedback down, and as your old loop fades, turn overdub on and begin developing it into something totally new. I encourage you to explore this technique a lot, as it is one of the most important in the limited loop vocabulary we have so far. For long loops, Matthias taught me the way to evolve things quickly. On the echoplex you can change the loop length by using the Multiply-Record combination. Do that to shorten the long loop to a small one containing an obvious theme. While reducing the feedback, begin overdubbing for a new loop. Either use just the overdub function or use multiply to get something longer. With some practice, you'll find it's easy to make smooth transitions from one loop to something totally new in a short amount of time, even when using long loops. Another obvious way to get the static cling out of your loops, is by using the multiple loop features found on both the jamman and echoplex. The simplest thing is to record one thing in loop 1, another thing in loop 2, something else in loop 3, etc, etc, and then switch between them. Maybe add a few overdubs here and there. Even better is to combine multiple loops with undo and loop copying. Start off with a simple theme in loop 1. Copy it to loop 2, and add some assortment of overdubs there. Switching between the two lets you easily add and remove your overdub layers. (quantized loop switching helps a lot here) Copy 1 to 3 and add a different set of overdubs. Now you have three variations to switch between. Copy loop 3 to loop 4, return to 3 and undo a few layers of overdub. Add some new stuff and copy it to loop 5. Suddenly you have all sorts of ways to vary your loops quickly, just by pressing nextloop. Explore, explore, explore. Loopers have lots of depth, both unto themselves and in what they can draw from you. Don't limit yourself so soon! See what you can find and let us know about it, so that we can learn too. >I don't think it's possible to have improvised looping ever match the >shifting dynamics of edited studio work. Even if you had multiple loops >available to you (say four 32 second loops) with the ability to mix them >in and out, how well could you keep track of what's going on, and how >good of a job could you do, in real-time, towards organizing it into a >structured piece? It's a noble goal, but in the same way that you can't >improvise a concerto, I don't think it's possible to whip up a coherent >piece in public. I wasn't attracted to looping so that I could >cut-and-paste instrumental songs on the fly--I wanted to chase longer >forms and textures, in a raga-esque manner. And here we discover that our different tribes of loopers are not paying much attention to each other. Hip-hop and techno dj's regularly employ radically shifting textures and dynamics as part of their looping vocabulary. Remix artist are also leaving the studios in droves to practice their often amazing loop chops live. These guys (and gals) seem to have no trouble maintaining numerous musical threads, constantly pulling them in and out of loops as part of their musical constructions. I don't have to think about whether its possible to do this live or not, because I've watched people doing it. There's a rich vocabulary there to explore, full of techniques not generally seen in the fripp side. Perhaps the question is not what's beyond Fripp, but what's already here, running along side-by-side? To really define and develop looping as a form, and to push it forward, means to pull together all these disparate influences and learn what we can. Mix it all up, pull the good bits out and make something new. Expand your horizons. We've got Glass, Reich, Fripp, Torn, Alex Patterson, Jack Dangers, Jourgensen, Laswell, dj Shadow, The Bomb Squad, Reznor, dj Spooky. Just a few off the top of my head and they're all totally different from each other. I haven't listened to all that list, have you? And there are so many other important innovators, all contributing to our loop language. Keep your mind open to what they have to say! kim ______________________________________________________________________ Kim Flint | Looper's Delight kflint@annihilist.com | http://www.annihilist.com/loop/loop.html http://www.annihilist.com/ | Loopers-Delight-request@annihilist.com