Re: only a A part?

[Andre LaFosse <altruist@earthlink.net>]

O Sarcastillaro,

> I like her music a lot, and I never said her method was not valid in
> any way.  I was not making a judgment call as to whether or not
> constructing a performance the way she does has any merit.  

I didn't take it that way, although your suggesting that people who play
composed looping tunes are "trying to get away with not having to deal
with not having a band" seems a bit judgemental to me.  Especially
coming from a guy who drags a drum machine to his gigs, dude!  ;)

> I've seen people do music like Amy's and Brian's in a band
> setup.  Nothing she did was impossible without the EDP... unless she
> did backwards stuff, which I can't recall now.  

There is some backwards stuff in at least one of her tunes (I think it's
called "My God"), where she reverses some latin speech mid-overdub so it
sounds like speaking in tongues.

> I'm not discounting the
> fact that it being her over and over didn't give the music a twist, but
> was it essential to the song?  Maybe, but I don't think so. 

To me, there are two components to the way that Amy (or Brian Kenney)
are using this sort of technology.  There's the raw sonic aspect - the
sound waves that come out of the speaker.  And then there's the
performative aspect of it - how the audience's perception or experience
of the looping apparatus can (or does) impact the way that they
experience the presentation, of which the sonic aspect is one of the
main parts.

So, to try and put that in less pseudo-intellectual terms: when you see
Amy batting her DrumKAT with sticks to switch back and forth between
loops in a very choppy manner, it's drawing the audience into the
apparatus of what she's doing in a really dynamic way.  

When Brian Kenney lays down a few lines of absurdist poetry and then
runs around the floor of the performance space, physically acting out
his lyrics which are being repeated via JamMan, he's not just using the
technology for a sonic result - he's using it in a performmative way
that helps draw the audience into both the unique apparatus of the
technology itself, as well as the performance as a whole.

So sure, Brian or Amy could still play the notes of their compositions
with a live band, but there's a very engaging and entertaining - and
most importantly, a very MUSICAL - statement they're making by using
their looping in the way that they are.  

This is one of the things I like most about people like them: a lot of
people tend to assume that looping has to be this inward-looking,
navel-gazing, meditative thing, but people like those two completely
explode that kind of idea.  They're creating very performance-oriented
works that would lose a big part of where I would say their "things" are
coming from if they weren't using the technology.

> > How incredibly boring would it be if people automatically assumed that
> > looping was supposed to be used for a specific musical style or
> > approach?
> >
> > Oh wait... that's pretty much the way it is anyway!  ;)
> 
> Is it?  At the SLO and Santa Cruz loopfests, I saw an a bunch of
> different approaches and devices.  Each act had it's own personality
> IMO.  I cringed when someone (I won't mention them to protect the
> guilty) said, "... I can't spent too much time in there (S.C), so much
> of this looping is so generic..."  I didn't totally dig all the acts
> either... who could?  But I didn't hear much that I would have labeled
> "generic."

My tongue was (and is) somewhat planted in cheek with that comment.  But
it's true that I believe there's still a lot of preconceptions haunting
the technique, and my feeling is based on opinions I've seen on this
list and elsewhere.  Some of these preconceptions include:

looping = geeky
looping = ambient
looping = drones
looping = avant-garde
looping = improvisational
looping = "new music"
looping = fundamentally non-mainstream
looping = highly repetitive music
looping = post-prog rock Frippertronic Soundscapes
looping = a specific musical result, rather than a technical starting point

The reason I tend to be such an annoying chest-beating moron about this
thing is because I think there's a big, big difference between someone
playing in one or more of the above-mentioned ways because they WANT to
(which is great), as opposed to their doing so because they ASSUME
that's what they're SUPPOSED to do with a looper.  If the instrument is
playing the musician more than the musician is playing the instrument,
then I think that's something the musician in question might want to
consider, at the very least.

> > Could it be that the "learning with time" angle is another way of
> > describing a person coming up with their own recipie, which they then
> > draw upon in their work?
> 
> Well, yes, I'm sure themes do develop in inprov and can be useful in a
> set piece, but I'm less interested in that and more in that magic when
> it "comes from thin air."  

What I'm talking about isn't really the idea of developing specific
musical ideas that recur over and over until they become themes.  I'm
talking about the overall "system" a person uses - that is, the
ingredients they choose to buy when they go to the store in the first
place (to use your analogy).

The choice of instrument, the choice of what effects a person may or may
not use on the sound, the types of functions you might choose to
implement, the way you practice with the gear... all of this is sort of
"learning how to cook," in a way.  And the more you learn about every
component in your approach (whether that component is a Repeater or a
new piece of music theory or a new philosophical point of view), the
more those seemingly "random" components are getting ordered and
structured in your own mind.

I completely understand where you're coming from with wanting to have
the music "come from thin air," but what I'm trying to express is the
idea that ANY musician has their own set of parameters that they're
working within, and their own vocabulary that they're accessing when
they play.  Even if the specific notes you're playing don't have a
consciously premeditated structure, one's own personal approach to it
DOES have a certain degree of familiarity and identity.  

So for someone like yourself (and for myself as well, more often than
not), the main appeal is being able to "harness the unknown" and try to
create something from the ground up.  But I can't honestly say that
there isn't a pretty tight range of possibility within which I know what
the stuff will likely sound like.

> I find no humor in your words and challenge you!  Pistols at sunrise!

I'd prefer the Dead Kennedys at midnight, personally... ;)

Touche!

--Andre LaFosse
The Echoplex Analysis Pages:
http://www.altruistmusic.com