Re: It just goes...

["K. Douglas Baldwin" <dbaldwin@suffolk.lib.ny.us>]

Stephan Ball's comment on the texture of conversation reminds me of an
observation I once read about and have subsequently observed myself: groups
of people tend to converse in waves of about 15 to 20 minutes. If you enter
the state that Stephan refers to (perhaps we could call it a focused
division of attention) you will often hear the volume and complexity of
crosstalk rise and fall in these long waves. I feel it's important for all
musicians to bring their attention to these kinds of cycles, particularly
when performing live. On some of my best solo gigs I've felt I could "ride
the waves" of the listeners and maintain attention to the performance by
holding an awareness of this phenomenon. I believe looping in general has a
real atraction for those who (either consciously or not) seek a resonance
with these slower cycles.

>I know this is getting pretty far out in OT land, but I often notice (or
maybe
>just lapse into a particular state) that when in a "noisy" environment 
>such
as a
>crowded restaurant, an effort can be made to treat all of the various
sounds
>(snippets of conversations, clinks of glass and silverware, etc., at
various
>frequencies) in a detached or homogeneous way.  The result is a rather
smooth
>cacophony that rises and falls with bits of recognizable verbage coming
>occasionlly to the surface.  It takes a little effort to treat all of the
sound
>sources in such an environment as totally equal with no intrinsic meaning
in
>terms of language, etc., but the result is a very interesting and somewhat
>exhilarating, "sound collage" experience.
>
>This is probably brought on by many years of intense listening to music of
>various sorts (including my own) and probably fostered my current interest
in
>some of the more ambient derivations of electronica by groups such as the
Orb
>and FSOL.  The point in all this?  Uh, well....
>
>Steve
>
>
>K. Douglas Baldwin wrote:
>
>> .....If I keep any loop on long enough (anywhere from a half hour to one
hour
>> or more), I have very pleasant audio hallucinations where EVERYTHING
sounds
>> like it's part of the loop AFTER the loop is turned off. LaMonte Young
kept
>> carefully tuned oscillators playing in his home for months at a time,
which
>> possibly would create a similar effect. Comments from others?
>