Re: Please lets all sit together now and define what we do!

[sine@zerocrossing.net]

> First of all, I'm certainly NOT always recording.  A big, big part of
> what I do has to do with taking material that's been recorded and then
> "bumping it around," by switching between loops, windowing, changing
> direction and playback speed, remultiplying, or redefining the length of
> the loop.

What I meant was that during your performances there's always a part where 
your
guitar signal is digitized and put into a memory buffer and then at some 
time
later played back.

Recording, no?  So if a loop is a phrase repeated, and you manipulate the
playback so it no longer is a representation of the original phrase, is it 
a
loop?  Isn't a true loop is a repeating phrase?  When we say "loop" what 
we're
talking about really is "tape loop."  A physical object.  But that physical
object is now gone (usually), replaced by another physical object, a big 
ol'
memory buffer.  Iron oxide replace by silicon RAM chips.  Since the RAM 
doesn't
have the limitations of the loop of tape, people like Matthais created 
software
that let's you do all sorts of minipulation of this buffer... to the point
where it's just so far away from the "tape loop" that it no longer is 
described
by that word.  Or... you can use it in a way that's exactly like a tape 
loop.
I do know one thing, you can't take a chunk out of a tape and edit it back 
in
somewhere else in real time.

I saw a performance where a woman wearing a "data glove" was controlling a
laptop running Steim's LiSa program.  She had it set up so that she could 
use a
gesture to capture her accompaniest (a sax player) and then spit it back 
out at
a later time.  Was she looping?  LiSa is certainly an audio looper with
realtime capabilities.  Now, there was usually a time period after the
recording was made and before the sample was played back.  Is that gap what
made it not looping?  I'm not sure.  I dont' think it was really looping
though, but the description of filling a buffer and having it spit back 
out is
more like what you're doing, no?  Maybe the fact that it's automated and  
you
HAVE to have it play back in some way is the difference?  Again, back to 
the
juggling analogy.  Is it all about the "enevitability" of  your signal 
coming
back to haunt you when the buffer length is defined?  Is that the 
"essence" of
it all?

Maybe.

Mark Sottilaro

P.S. Andre, you're all that and a bag of chips.