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Looper's Delight
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Hi all, Just thought I'd pop in with my own $.02 about musical forms as it relates to looping (for me). Any of you who might have been unlucky enough to have ever heard any of my stuff will no doubt have noticed the distinct lack of ABA, ABACAB or any other "forms" in what I do. There may be a beginning and a middle and an end . . . but nothing really quite like a song form there. True, mostly it's because I'm a musical ignoramus, but not entirely. I don't come at music from a "musical" background to begin with (I'm a painter/designer/visual artist by training/temperment/profession). So, you'll just have to excuse my lack of "formal" acumen where music is concerned. Although I was a little more than just somewhat aware of song structures as I went about making looping music for the past umpity-ump years, the analogy I always had in my head was one of either painting or juggling -- not making "pop" songs (or any other kind of "songs" for that matter). In painting there are forms and a set of aesthetic principals (maybe) at work, but none were obviously, directly analogous to musical forms as such (or so it seemed to me for a long time at least). I was/am a big fan of the American abstract expressionist painters of mid-century so I expect that might explain why. Think Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem De Kooning, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell or Helen Frankenthaler and you'll sortta have the idea. On the other hand (to me), looping seemed/seems a lot like the art of juggling. In juggling, you toss a series of objects in the air and attempt to keep 'em going. If you're really good you can juggle several items and do things like add and/or subtract objects of different shapes, sizes textures and colors to the juggling "loop" to make it interesting, challenging, entertaining, beautiful. The delay loop is like gravity -- where stuff you toss up keeps falling back at you (even your musical "clams"). The challenge for me is to keep it going and make it interesting (even if there is one object -- like a red apple --that is always there in the loop from the beginning to the end of the piece. It sorta gives the goings on a certain "continuity" and wholeness. But, maybe I'm just lazy . . . I love certain kinds of "pop" music. But I guess I never really thought there was any good enough reason for me to try to do that. So many others were already doing it so well anyway. Why bother? What could I possibly add to THAT cultural conversation? Not much, if anything. I listen to a lot of non-western musics and to jazz in which there is a musical statement (the head) and various extemporizations of it over time -- then, finally, a return to the simple beginning statement. In some ways this seems like an ABA structure but in another way it seems like AA'A"A'''A''''A form, or some such (to ignorant ol' me). I know this is kind of weird. But that's sorta where my brain was when I started doing all of this looping schtuff -- and it has been there ever since. I know that looping gear has advanced a long way in the last 20 years. I may actually create "A" "B" and "C" loops in my EDP as I'm going along now . . . but stupid me is still thinking of those not as ABABABCABABA but still as AA'A''A''' etc. It's a mental flaw and limitation I suppose -- like the one that prevents me from singing and playing at the same time (I can't do that either). Oh well. So sue me . . . My hat is off to those folks who CAN actually think in this way and rehearse and study their looping gear 'til they've got it so licked that it finally can enable them to craft perfect pop song structures like nobody's business (solo or in a band) in the heat of the moment. I can't do that -- just like I can't sing and play (or dance for that matter). That craft is an amazement to me . . . and beyond my kenning or ability to replicate in this lifetime. Maybe in the next one . . . Best regards, Ted Killian http://www.mp3s.com/tedkillian http://www.pfmentum.com/flux.htm