Michael asks about looping technique...(long post)

[Fmplautus <Fmplautus@aol.com>]

Hi Michael:

You bring up an interesting subject...but one this group must approach 
with a
broad, broad brush...like the kind your grandfather used to shave with.

The LoOpdOctOrs believe looping "technique" depends on the musicians brain,
equipment, and ears...so it's difficult to codify or reduce down rules.  
It's
not like, saying, YOU THERE, MUSICIAN, learn to "vibrato" on a violin 
string,
or "legato" over the keyboard.  Depending on the machine it can require
monstrous agility (anybody want to talk about Jamman foot pedals again?), 
or a
simple toe tap or button push.    At least that's the purely physical side 
of
it.

Much of it has to do with inspiration and creative brain power.  Do you 
want
play 4 beats per measure against five beats?  Do you want to start a 
"round"
on a looper.  How effusive is your sense of rhythm?  Both the now deceased
Lexicon Jamman and still alive and kicking Echoplex have wonderful "tap"
abilities that can facilitate interesting and complex rhythmic overlays.  

Then there is the question of sequencing and fading loops.  The Echoplex 
has a
"feedback" dial, which would be more accurately titled "ripple" because it
spreads and dissipates your loops like a pebble tossed in a pond.  The 
Jamman
also has this available but with fewer rippling possibilities (16 via midi
pedal as opposed to 99 with the dial on the front panel of the echoplex).  
How
you manipulate these ripples can also probably be called technique...but 
every
looper will have a different take on this.  We like to ripple a loop down 
and
then stabilize it and make is shimmer...but is that technique?  Also you 
can
divide the memory in the Jamman and Echoplex so that you can have eight or 
so
discrete loops lined up to file in at the punch of a button.  How you work
your way through these, and how you manipulate them before they come back 
to
the audience...well, we don't know what to call it.

Another part of looping "technique" has a lot to do with the particular
musical instrument you play, and what the physical requirements and 
demands of
that instrument happen to be.  Our keyboardist loops and sequences all the
time, and before he met the other two LoOpdOctOrs, he hardly even thought
about it as  "looping," since it was just part and partial of the 
synthesizers
he'd been using for years, and making an arpeggio go round and round was 
kind
of a no-brainer (he's since been operated on).  But on guitar or bass or 
cello
or harp or other stringed instruments with a finger interface, the 
"technique"
of looping involves what you can pull out of or off of the strings.  We 
bet if
there are any looping trombonists in this group, they can tell you about 
the
interface between rubber-lipping and the sweet spot on their loopers.

Finally, a lot of us loopers use mixers, and the art of patching, through-
putting and fading your mixer while running your loops could also be called
"technique."   David Torn has even offered to design a dedicated integrated
"looper/mixer," but a musical instrument company hath yet to heed his 
bidding.

Here's a real world example of some looping "technique."  We recently did a
recording session with a acoustic guitarist "folk" singer where her song
called for a school bell ringing from a faraway and now lost
place...(theatrically, think of "Our Town" by Thornton Wilder or 
"Brigadoon"
by Lerner and Lowe.)  To get there, we created a lot of ambient radio
noise...jacking up an old compressor pedal so it hissed and snorted like a
nearly shorted circuit, and sent eerie ambient "aether" noise into the
recording channel.  It was like trying to dial up a radio signal from years
past that had floated back into the cosmos.   We then faded and looped that
into the Echoplex.

After that, we started popping harmonics on the low E string on our 
electric
guitar while looking for the right button punch in place with the echoplex,
and more importantly the right button "punch out" place so that the "bell"
would mournfully toll away over this haze of electronic noise.   We then 
found
it was even cooler to use a pitch shifter to make the bell bigger and 
fatter.
We faded that in over the compressor noise.

So, is this technique, or is this simply your brain on "tug" mode?  The
LoOpdOctOrs can't say.

If you want a more nuts and bolts thing, and you're a guitarist...harmonics
are great "friends" for ambient loops and so is any kind of volume "fade"
whether via volume knob on guitar or amp, or floor pedal.  

To make chimey Zen noise try paperclips, pick scraping, mallets and other
sources of guitar rubbing.  Conversly, to make angry, rude fourth-grader
noise, do the same thing.  

Amplifier distortion and gain can be a BIG friend, but not in the heavy 
metal
kind of way.  It's just that with something as subtle as a paper clip 
dangling
off a string, or the harmonics pinched off a bridge of a headstock tree,
getting the gain up will allow you to hear the noise and then emulate the
fluttering wing of the bird.  Also...jack up the gain on an amp, pitch 
shift
down, strap in a fuzz box, and start "fisting" your solid body (in a nice 
way
of course!) and you can make it sound like it's the "big one" whatever your
big one might be.

We love E-Bows...not only for their infinite "synth-like" sustain but also
becuase you can pop a harmonic on the string and place the ebow over the
guitar pickup field and just magnetize the high holy hell of the harmonics
coming off...feed that into an looper and spit it out through a strange
morphing stereo-psychotic Lexicon Vortex field and your psychiatrist may 
order
a round of psychopharmeceuticals so he can party down with your technique.

A great place to learn some "technique" is to try to get your hand on David
Torns' videos.  He did a couple for...lets see, we think it's "homespun"
videos and he explains his Painting with Loops facility.  He also has some
really great articles he's written and published in Guitar Player magazine
about looping on his websight.  Have you heard his recordings?  What Means
Solid, Traveler, Tripping Over God and Polytown are all amazing.  

Like much of the rest of music, the best "technique" is giving yourself the
permission to really listen.

Best,
The LoOpdOctOrs