RE: Slick n' Finished VS Fresh n' New/looping in groups

["Liebig, Steuart A." <LiebigSA@Maritz.com>]

Well for my two cents worth:

I think Kim made some good points in terms of improv in general.

More specifically, I play in a couple of different
ensembles/bands/improvising circumstances that have a least two people,
sometimes three who use looping devices in any given piece of music. As
in most improv situations, there's always the risk of "failure." That
being said, it often comes off as being fairly successful musically,
IMHO. Sometimes it's just one person looping, sometimes two or three.
Sort of like when you stop to leave space for solo, duo or trio sections
in an improv. I enjoy the collisions and/or phasings that happen. We
tend to generally use the loopers as textural devices rather than
rhythmic devices-though I do work with a singer who will loop whatever
the whole band is doing aand play it back at us, sometimes we use that
as the groove to set us into a new section. Of course we also use this
sort of thing in the "soundscape" (Fripp doesn't have a patent on this
term right?) realm as well. 

Looping is only a small part of the "arsenal," so this may not address
the question fully (?).

stig 

> >
> >How do you accomplish this when you are playing with other players?
> >
> 
> how do you do it without looping? The single most important skill for
> group
> improv is the ability to listen. It doesn't matter what instrument you
> are
> playing or how good you are with it. You have to listen to the others
> and
> play WITH them. From there, knowing your instrument well enough that
> you
> can focus on music rather than technique is always helpful. Know the
> other
> players a bit. Possess a large enough vocabulary with your instrument
> so
> that you have places to pull ideas from. And of course, practice. Good
> improvisational skills, whether alone or with others, require practice
> same
> as anything else. All of this is true whether you use loops or not.
> 
> specifics about looping? I don't really know! I'm waiting for enough
> mass
> of loopers to appear so that we can really start doing that and find
> out! I
> think it is up to us to develop the body of knowledge to make it work.
> Some
> here are experimenting with group looping, how is it going? What can
> you
> teach us of your experiences with that so far?
> 
> 
>