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Re: My First Loop Gig



Hey Phil, loopers,

Welcome to the week of first loop gigs :). I have a tale to tell of my own
experience this past weekend

Rick was in Belfast as part of his Eu tour, I had arranged a radio 
interview
with the local BBC station and because Rick was delayed travelling from
staying with Per in Sweden I was on my own in the studio with my DL-4 and a
Ghanaian balafon.  I did a casual looping sound check on the balafon which
the engineer recorded and they played it as the opener to the interview, My
first ever looping performance was on BBC radio followed by my first ever
live performance in the same interview where I did a bit of impromptu water
gargling which I used to demonstrate the simple functions of the DL-4.  
Rick
joined us on the phone from his ferry terminal in Scotland and arrived with
me a few hours later than that. The radio interview is at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/realmedia/arts_x_thu.ram it will be
there until Thursday and the portion is at about 24 minutes into the show.
They cut off the gargling for some reason, space I presume.

We did the performance on Friday evening, two solo sets, some duets plus a
combined set with a friend on Contra-alto clarinet.

Up to this weekend I had only ever looped at home by way of practise and
familiarisation.  I'm a percussionist so I worked with open mics and wore
cans most of the time for (everyone else's) convenience.  I had been 
working
through my studio system which seemed to work fine and I could set
everything for a decent volume without feedback (of the larcene variety).
I'm using a single DL-4 on an aux channel from my desk so I had individual
control over the mic and looped signals

I opened the gig by explaining a little about looping in simple terms, with
a couple of demonstrations by looping what I was saying.  That seemed to go
well.  Once I started into my set however the feedback started. I had
control over my desk with my left hand so I was straight on it and dropped
the DL-4 level to kill the feedback which by this stage had gotten into my
loop :) It worked within the loop so I was able to lift the volume again 
and
continue.

The feedback was an irregular but present feature of the performance
overall, it only really squealed in one place, mostly it was a slight
ringing or tone.  Speaking with Rick afterwards I found out it was in part
due to was due to my 'tweez' being at 12 O'clock causing some form of
internal feedback rather than mic/speaker feedback.

I found left handed feedback surfing whilst struggling to maintain
sufficient volume, lifting and replacing noise items, being creative
musically and having to juggle the pedal control all quite a handful.  Boy
did it ever feel hot in there :)  I had started off with no headphones but
because the volume of the loops were so low in my anti-feedback crusade, I
had to wear them pretty much full time.

My first piece was a solo piece for Balafon which faded into a piece for 
Tar
(Mid Eastern frame drum) feedback :), chinese cymbal and threaded bar
cutting to a duet for caxixi (Brasilian basket shaker) and 2 litre plastic
cola bottles, one of which has a tyre valve attached and was pumped up to
give a high ringing note.  I tried to start a 'house' groove, using a foot
stomp for the kick and the ssshhh of the tyre valve release as the hats -
good idea but it didn't translate well because of the lack of volume.

The second piece used whirlies, kalimba, chinese cymbal, a cordless drill
and theremin. Unfortunately feedback forced me to drop the volume and wear
headphones and it turned out disappointingly that FOH it was very quiet for
the audience.  I finished up doing a short solo on bodhran.  Feedback (of
the response kind) from the small but fascinated audience was that they
enjoyed my performance but it was very quiet.  My own internal audience in
my head was going WTF! WTF! WTF! :) LOL

Rick's set was awesome, he opened with a piece based on windchimes which he
had borrowed from my house and then a beautiful bell piece followed by a
piece for day-glo plastic 'robotic voice' toys with beatboxing and singing.
I've never seen a performance with such sonic variety which is quite
something for me to say as I pride myself on my eclectic approach to noise
and its serviceability.  I got on very well with Rick personally and
musically, we found ourselves finishing off each other's musical sentences
and when we dueted on drums you would have thought we had been playing
together for years in spite of the fact that we had only jammed 2-3 minutes
that afternoon.  I'd encourage anyone to catch Rick's show on this tour,
it's one of those musical oddities that you won't ever forget.

Mark Buckingham joined us on Contra-Alto clarinet to finish off the 
evening,
the first piece was Rick and I both looping and the second was a dark
atmospheric piece with Mark playing and Rick mangling, I was playing 
bodhran
and some texture looping.  Everything was routed thru Rick's equipment so 
he
was able to loop and mangle anything that either I or Mark were doing.

I'm glad to have lost the looping cherry and it's funny how public
embarrassment (of a sort) kind of focuses the mind on what should be done
differently.  After my own experiences and watching Rick, I now have a
virtual set in my head of things that I could have done and approaches that
I could have taken.  I'm now very much looking forward to my next looping
gig whenever that will be, I'll need an hour on stage to make sure that I
have the technology and micing sorted and I can see the need for a second
looper box of some sort so that I can work more than one loop 
simultaneously

Oh yeah, if anyone from Line-6 is reading this, any chance of a separate
button for reverse on the DL-4?, the
glitch caused by double clicking which puts the loop out of time is really 
a
pain in the ass, sometimes it gives interesting results but as a
percussionist it's too random for me to rely on unless I stop and restart
the loop.  The 'one shot' button is rarely used in my case, is there any 
way
this can be re-assigned?

I consider myself well charred but fully baptised into the family of live
performing loopers.  An exceptionally worthwhile exercise in terms of
putting on Ireland's first ever Live Looping performance, a money loser for
me as a promoter but the investment in the art was well worthwhile IMO.  It
was great to meet Rick, a enigmatic and hugely creative individual, Chris 
is
lovely and such a support for him!!.

The invitation to the percussion day of the Y2K3 festival in CA in October
festival makes me very happy if I can get the support of the British 
Council
to attend and I look forward to meeting some fellow LD members there.

Paul
----------------------
Paul Marshall
Portfolio Sound Artist
http://www.powerhaus.net
http://www.drumdojo.com
http://www.differentdrums.co.uk
NI Facilitator for the Da Capo Foundation
www.dacapo.co.uk
Drumdojo Recommended link For June 2003
Percussion of Persia http://tinyurl.com/ddbg