An Oxymoron Replies

["Rick Walker/Loop.pooL" <GLOBAL@cruzio.com>]

I am a good human drummer (who is also a looper) and what I have found is
that the only way realistically link your repeater and
your drummer is to have your drummer LEARN how to play to loops.

The programs that convert audio signals to midi work great if you have a
four on the floor approach but suck when anything syncopated is thrown in
the mix................at least that has been my experience.

Learning how to play to loops in real time is a minor artform and I would 
be
happy to address this issue (maybe in a thread) at some point a little 
later
when I am not so overwhelmed with gigs and tour preparations (the next 
month
or so of my life).

Excellent monitoring seems to be an absolutely essential key!!!!

A drummer who is not experienced with playing to click tracks, sequences 
and
drum machines really owes it to themselves
to learn how to do this.   It actually took me dozens of hours of 
practising
to get the hang of not only playing with a perfect click track but to also
be able to play relaxedly and fluidly  with good feel while doing so.
Playing to loops that have human inconsistencies in them (like ALL of them)
is even more problematic.  I can always tell that I am improvising with a
sophisticated looping musician
when they can play to what the loop IS ,   not to what the loop SHOULD BE.

Steve Lawson really turned me onto the idea of playing really long loops
that 'hint' at metricity and then memorizing the loops until one can play
against them.      Since getting turned on to this cool concept (I think he
played one loop for 17 hours while he
did e-mail and farted around his house until he had every 'event' of the
loop memorized)  I have been experimenting with the whole
idea of stretching time within a fixed loop length.

This is, of course, what happens when rhythms 'swing' or are stretched (the
way, say, that Brazilian batucada rhythms are not
perfectly symmetrical.     At some point I'll post a couple of cool
exercises to learn how to play these different feels and to
come up with your own.

later,   yours,  in rhythym...........................Rick 'Oxymoron' 
Walker