Re: LIVE LOOPING: a definition

[Kelly Coyle <kellycoyle@earthlink.net>]

I wonder if ideas like "live looping" or "free jazz" (my usual 
pidgeonhole) 
and the like don't overvalue our (we musicians) contribution to the 
outcome. I've understood John Cage and his cronies as trying to get 
intentionality OUT of music, and simply creating processes that result in 
sound. They seem to me to be saying ALL of it is just processes that 
result 
in sound. Does it matter that it's live, looped, improvised, or free? I 
know I struggled with my own (first) recording over whether to advertise 
that it was recorded "live in the studio," no overdubs, minimal 
after-processing. I finally decided that that was just some kind of 
musical 
machismo, and that the way it sounded was the way it was. I think Cage 
(let's see if I can make this cohere) directed us to the idea that "music" 
is really an act of listening, a stance one takes toward sound. Where that 
sound comes from, or how it's made, is perhaps only interesting to the 
makers.

Now I'm not sure if that was germane or not.








--On Wednesday, May 28, 2003 6:09 PM -0700 Tim Nelson 
<psychle62@yahoo.com> 
wrote:

> I was hoping someone would answer my question by
> saying "No, that's process music."
>
> Which, in turn, would raise the question: in such a
> case, at what point does 'live looping' leave off and
> 'process music' begin? It definitely *started* as live
> looping. Even though I wasn't actively adding to the
> loops while I was writing the e-mail, I could've
> jumped back in at any moment. Is it the length of the
> pauses? Is it the fact that at a certain point I
> ceased to provide live input and let the machines
> continue to phase-slip the loops, even though it
> wasn't clear whether or not I'd be back to play some
> more notes or not. We're talking about one piece of
> music...
>
> Note also that my description of this music doesn't
> even begin to convey what it actually sounds like. In
> this case, it could probably be called 'dark ambient'
> or something, but it really could have been a lot of
> things.
>
> -t-
>
> --- Tim Nelson <psychle62@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> np: Four unsynched loops consisting of notes that I
>> played on a stratocaster about twenty minutes ago
>> which are repeating and de-evolving on a three
>> channel system with various types and degrees of
>> post-processing on each channel. The music continues
>> to evolve and change even though I've put the guitar
>> down and am writing an e-mail. Am I live looping?
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
> http://calendar.yahoo.com
>
>



---
www.endtimequartet.com