Re: prerecorded loops

[ArsOcarina@aol.com]

Hi all,

Hmmmm . . . interesting discussion. I can well understand 
most of your aversions to prerecorded elements in music 
as somehow being "fake" or something. We all remember 
Mili Vanilli pretty well I suppose. And, as loopers we
may all be a little bit sensitive to folks thinking the same 
about what we do -- that looping is a "cheat" of some kind.

However, for the past couple of years I have been using at 
least SOME prerecorded loops in my performances and 
recordings. It was not always like that though . . . It's been
a fairly recent thing for me. But, provisionally, I have no problem 
with anything that's creative and "works" on some "gut" level. 
But hey . . . that's just me.

Once upon a time . . .

When I lived in southern California there were any number
of brilliant people to call on at any time (or so it seemed) to 
organize a jam, a gig or a recording session for the stuff 
I was interested in doing . . . whenever or whatever. I may
be over-romanticising the past a little . . . but whatever. 
Now that I live in Medford, OR there seems to be a dearth 
of musicians around of my own "ilk" (whatever the heck that 
is) and interests to try to put something together and 
pull something off.

So, a few years ago I began by recording snippets of my 
own past material, tweaking it in the computer and loading 
it into a phrase sampler to form the "ambient beds" of 
some "new" pieces. It could be backwards samples me or
my 3 kid's singing . . . or some of my own m'bira or ocarina 
playing . . . or didgeridoo or keyboard or kitchen utensils . . . 
power tools, whatever . . . what have you. It was my stuff and 
I was trying to find ways of making a "live" audio collage to 
play with and against. And . . . I had enough gear to cart to a gig 
already without bringing a whole orchestra's worth of instruments 
along too. 

I've been doing looping since the early '80s. So . . . it just 
didn't seem like that big of a "conceptual" jump to use loops 
of material that I'd previously created at home in the studio. 
Nobody could really "play" the stuff I was doing this with 
anyway. Forget Milli Vanilli, even Pink Floyd has been pre 
recording "music concrete" accompaniment for decades. 
It's nothing new. Great gobs of folks were doing it eons 
before that.

Anywho, I share most folks a strong distaste for drum machines. 
But, I eventually I discovered that in the computer I could 
take a snippet of live (or prerecorded) druming/percussion 
and make a somewhat more interesting "beat" loop out of it 
than I could EVER actually program into a drum machine. 
Yes, sometimes these loops were very "static." But still, 
somehow they were pretty compelling and even musically
"useful" nonetheless. 

Eventually I found ways if gathering several loops that fit
together as an interesting "family" so to speak . . . ambient 
stuff that interrelated thematically, plus percussion bits 
that interlocked and subdivided time in interesting ways and 
pads/swells that were in the same keys. These formed
the basises of new "pieces" that could still be "played" in
a live sense . . . minimally, sort of . . . and they also 
allowed some flexibility still to turn that "unexpected corner" 
every now and then to explore an idea that hadn't occurred 
to me before when improvising on my guitar.

And . . . to play with the idea even further . . . I eventually took 
one of those silly Yamaha keyboards with those danged canned 
rhythm tracks in it (I'd bought it for my kids originally) and
I recorded some of the more fun, ironic, ersatz bits into my 
computer, treated and distorted the holy bejezus out of them 
and "viola" . . . some of the more "rockish" pieces on my CD 
were sort of unintentionally born that way. Ironically, I'd put 
them together originally so I could "exorcise" all those rock 
guitar "wankster" demons in the safety and privacy of my own 
home . . . and get them out of my system before a studio recording 
or practice session of more "serious pieces." Funny thing is that 
they got recorded anyway and it is often THOSE tracks that s
some folks single out as faves on the CD . . . go figure.

So, here I am. Using unsequenced but still very much prerecorded
material in what I do in the studio and live. Is it legitimate? Is it 
fakery and flimflammery? I dunno. Is it real or Memorex? A little
of each I suppose. The whole live audio "collage" aspect still seems
fun and "immediate" and emotionally real to me . . . but I'm pretty
sure there's something seriously "wrong" with me anyway so it's 
better not to judge by what I think. I try to keep a sense of humor
(and perspective) about the proceedings anyway.

Here's another question . . .

In the past 6 months I have snipped a bit of orchestral music 
from an obscure foreign movie soundtrack CD . . . just a couple 
of string swells and a swell or two of brass. I had to alter them to be 
in the same key as each other (and all of them together into one of 
the keys I like to play in on the guitar). As individual elements one 
would never associate them with any particular piece of someone's 
"intellectual property" they are almost so completely and totally 
generic -- though in truth I must admit that they are still, in fact, 
other artist's work (especially the orchestra's), even though I've 
edited and altered them significantly with filters and other processing in 
Hyperprism. Until I have access to an orchestra of my own . . . am 
I doing something seriously wrong here? Maybe? Maybe not?
Someone wanna offer an opinion?

One of my favorite electronic musicians, James Tenney, made a 
"digital" sample of Elvis's "Blue Suede Shoes" straight off a single
record at Bell Labs in the early '60s. The computer recording 
"medium" at the time was a big stack of IBM punch cards -- anyone 
here remember those? Anywho, He took those cards and semi-
randomly shuffled them up and then ran them back through the 
computer again. The resulting recording became one of his major 
"breakthrough" pieces -- though it wouldn't sound too remarkable 
to anyone nowadays with the audio capabilities of personal computers
currently available. Modern sampling . . . and maybe even a few 
DJs owe a lot to him conceptually.

In the meantime . . . I dunno. Fake? Real? I'm just makin' noise, 
playing guitar and amusing myself I suppose. What I do isn't 
for everybody. And I'm certainly not making any money off it
(though I don't think THAT'S any excuse either). Is it music? Is
it artistically valid? Is it honest? These are all serious questions. 
Hey . . . let the "flame" wars begin.

Best regards,

Ted Killian

http://www.pfmentum.com/flux.html