Re: Crisis!!!!!!

[improv@peak.org (Dave Trenkel)]

>   Hi friends , I`ve got a major crisis on my hands. I`m gonna come right 
>out
>and say it:
>
>I`ve begun to get doubts about looping.................and I need some
>reassuring.
>
>The thing is , when I loop it doesn`t seem to go anywhere. I always get
>stuck in
>the same tracks and the music sounds  like.........looping. Sometimes my 
>Jamman
>can feel like a limitation , rather than a new colour on my (somewhat
>limited) canvas.
>
I played a gig with Minus last night, and afterwards, I noticed that I'd
only used the JamMan very briefly. It was not really a concsious decision
not to loop or anything, it's just the way that the variables added up for
this night, and it seemed that we were a bit lighter on our feet than
usual, and it was nice to have the space that the loops usually fill. We're
not a looping band, per se, though both the guitarist and I have jamsters
(and the drummer's pretty loopy as well), looping is just one of our bag of
tricks.

>BUT:  It worries me that what started out like a dream with endless
>posibilities ended
>SO QUICKLY.  I had a ball with it ,  played in different musical
>situations and HAD FUN.
>And now it suddenly feels so alien. Like a third arm or something.
>
>Have any of you gone through something similar??  If so , how did u get
>through it??
>
When I go back over tapes of gigs just after I got the JamMan, I now cringe
at how much I used it. Over time, I figured out where it was appropriate,
where it was just a gimmick, and where it could really do something
magical. I think that what you're going through is just your automatic
censor kicking in. You've probably learned a lot about the techniques of
looping by using it all the time, now subconsciously you are wanting to
figure out the esthetics of looping. If what feels right is to play without
effects, then do that, but whatever you do, don't get rid of the JamMan, at
some point you'll probably come back to it with a better idea of how it
fits your personal approach to music.

________________________________________________________
Dave Trenkel : improv@peak.org  : www.peak.org/~improv/

"...there will come a day when you won't have to use
gasoline. You'd simply take a cassette and put it in
your car, let it run. You'd have to have the proper
type of music. Like you take two sticks, put 'em
together, make fire. You take some notes and rub 'em
together - dum, dum, dum, dum - fire, cosmic fire."
                                            -Sun Ra
________________________________________________________