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Looper's Delight
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mike asked: "i was wondering what kinds of instruments are being looped by the users of this group" rick replies: As I proudly told Michael Manring during our recent tour, "I'm fearless about playing a lot of instruments that I don't know how to play in public". I play a lot of invented and 'found' instruments, live: The 'Mikeyphone' was invented and given to me for my birthday by the brilliant Rhode Island musician, Michael Haumesser (Not Noise). It consists of 7 Scottish oatmeal tins, suspended by heavy rubber bands with different levels of water in each (for tuning purposes). When played with the thumbs, lightly, the cans jiggle and the pitch warbles, deliciously. I used them on my latest CD on a piece called 'the Box', which was a commission for the Dr. Shaffer and Mr. Stern Dance Ensemble. I also collect metal, wooden and plastic bowls, plastic dishes & cups, different sized spoons (incredible for ersatz gamelan) and various other objects and use them as faux modal 'marimbas'. On this last mini tour, I tried to take completely different instruments to every show (except for my piece that uses only Dayglo Green Translucent Plastic). I played bowed crotales, malleted upturned chinese 'jhing' cymbals, republic of tea tin 'marimba' glass globes played with jazz brushes so that the pitch bends with every note,alligator-clipped,capoed bass guitar, melodica, sonica (a wierd, rare, touch sensitive diatonic, two octave sine wavish generator), gas stove pipes, corrugate straws (these last two are incredible overtone generators), bluegels (sp?), liquid glass ghatam (a large glass flower vase with water in it that allows radical pitch bending when played like an Udu drum, Martha Stewart brass wastepaper basket (as close to a tabla as the metallic world will ever get ;-), dumbec, 'sound o' god tambourine', hammered mandolin (those ever present plastic tiki martini skewers again), Copper Spitton (another Udu-esque drum)--------which reminds me that I've been wanting to experiment with putting water in it and I just dashed to the sink and tried it--------AWESOME!!!!----brass candy dishes (stuck with the thumb and then manipulating the overtones with my mouth and, speaking of mouths: several different extended vocal techniques (warble singing, trill singing,hummm-whistling, overtone singing, gutteral overtone singing,finger trilled singing, faux industrial beatbox,hip hop beat box and various and sundry 'sssssses', shhhhhhhes' and 'chhhhhhhhhes'. What I love about looping is that a seemingly incongruous or random sound or even mistake becomes fascinating, frequently, once it has repeated over and over. loop and out, Rick Walker (loop.pool)