Looper's Delight Archive Top (Search)
Date Index
Thread Index
Author Index
Looper's Delight Home
Mailing List Info

[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Date Index][Thread Index][Author Index]

Re: What looping is, is not, or might be (Was: Please lets all sit together now and define what we do!)



A tangent, perhaps, but a though I had just now . . .

Last year sometime I read a book entitled 
"A History of Knowledge/Past, Present, and 
Future" by Charles Van Doren. The book is largely,
generally about what one might expect -- an 
overview of major pivotal events and/or ideas 
in world (mostly western -- alas) history.

The one pertinent reason I bring it up at this time
is just one predictive idea that was proposed in 
the very short final chapter "The next 100 years."
The author goes out on a limb somewhat here and 
makes some predictions of the future that we are
already in this little LD group beginning to see the 
very germination of in terms of human culture
and activity.

He talks about it in various indirect ways, but the
idea (basically) is this: computers and technology
are so becoming an extension of ourselves, vastly
adding new capabilities to individual people -- and will
so insinuate itself completely into every possible
human activity (including the arts) as to increase
and/or amplify an individuals performance capabilities,
that human potential will be transformed beyond
it's current borders -- AND this technology will basically
be more or less INDIVISIBLE from the individual.

Whatever the hell devices we use to do it . . . looping
is an amplification of ourselves. Sure guitar amps
and PA systems make us LOUDER but loopers make 
us more . . . well . . . make more of US -- our musical
ideas, our ability to keep a myriad of ideas going
simultaneously (real-time input or not) and ability
to improvise with big blocks of information (many
more notes that 10 fingers can play at a time) 
chock-a-block, so-to-speak . . . to actually both
play an instrument making notes in real time AND
improvise and play with larger and larger chunks of 
the "big picture" of composition at the same time.

Van Doren speaks of the end of the next 100 years as
being a time when we have "companion computers"
that we wear (or are incorporated into us physically)
that help us THINK, put whole libraries in our heads,
whole histories in our memories, new abilities at our
fingertips, whole new art forms in our imaginations.
I dunno about that . . .

Admittedly the current crop of loopers are waaaaaay more
primitive than any of that business. But it is kinda interesting 
that, whatever our "input device" -- be it a Stratocaster, 
a turntable, or a qwerty keyboard -- these things (looping 
device) become sortta connected to us by umbilicals (both 
of physical wires and invisible, mental ones -- ideas) to enable 
us to be MORE of ourselves.

Because at the heart of it is still an artist of some sort.
An audience's enjoyment is not necessarily helped or 
hindered by the knowledge that a given performer's 
abilities have been enhanced by looping/sampling technology.
As far as the musical listening experience is concerned
it may well nigh be invisible -- perhaps even should be. 
And stylistically . . . perhaps . . . the kind of music is 
pretty irrelevant (though, like electricity and rock 'n' roll,
looping -- as it advances -- may usher in some new, as yet 
unknown, kinds and styles of music. Looping may be 
morphed entirely and folded into something else we
haven't even imagined yet as a concept.

Looping isn't an "art form" in itself . . . at least not yet 
anyway (IMHO). We're right at the moment that it is still 
just another tool . . . like when some ancient ancestor 
found that he could throw a small sharp rock with a lot
more lethal power if it were attached to a pole (making 
a spear). But that doesn't mean that when it really, finally
becomes part of us (say in a 100 years) that it won't be. 
Perhaps Andre is closer to that goal than any of us -- and
even he doesn't think of it as a separate art form yet.

I think looping will eventually become as much a part 
of music (of every kind) as electricity itself. And 
just as little consideration will be given it as we might 
give questions of what sort of wattage/voltage/amperage 
consumption is occurring at any given time by a band 
on a stage. Unless there is a shortage or there's a worry 
about blowing a fuse, nobody ever thinks about it --certainly 
not the audience. 

Looping will eventually be ubiquitous -- and it will be nearly
invisible (or at least go practically unnoticed). It will be 
just another aspect of what musicians do.

Something I do think of as an art form however is:
the art of designing looping devices and technologies.
Right now the people who design the tools we are 
increasingly coming to depend on are the real "looping
as art form" artists. That means you Matthias and 
Kim, et al.

Cheers,

Ted Killian
Ted Killian
http://www.mp3s.com/tedkillian
http://www.pfmentum.com/flux.htm