RE: Cranky Kim

["Mike Barrs" <mbarrs@nightviewer.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kim Flint [mailto:kflint@loopers-delight.com]

> Hi Mike! Welcome to Looper's Anonymous!

Hi Kim, and thanks!

Much snippage below, to respond to the main points.

> >If you want to play with other musicians, a looper is a barrier
> >because it's like playing to a click track... which everyone
> hates, unless
> >they're another looping musician.
>
> That's true if the looper is a beginner and doesn't know how to adjust
> their loops with the music around them.

I don't know about that. Even with tap tempo on the Repeater, you're a long
way from the kind of realtime, continuous tempo adjustment that happens 
with
live musicians. Also, it's a strange concept (outside of looping) for the
rest of the band to follow the guitar player, or the keyboard player, or
whoever is into looping. Tempo management is normally the role of the
drummer and bass player.

We're talking about two different cultures here -- live, free tempo groups
vs. groups that work on a fixed clock. I'm not trying to make the case that
one is better than the other... just trying to point out that it's a
different culture, and it's an uphill battle to get someone to move into a
different culture.

> It's no different from a beginner on any other instrument. How well does
> someone who just started playing drums play with others? That's gonna be
> just as much a tempo problem!

Before I got into guitar, I was a drummer. So I'm coming at this from both
perspectives.

That makes it twice as embarrassing that I've had to spend time learning 
how
to hit the loop button on the downbeat!

However... this is different from keeping a steady beat on kit drums, where
you're active all the time. The way I'm doing it now (as a guitar player)
requires precision timing once every 12 bars (or whatever loop structure 
I'm
using). It's not as easy as keeping tempo when your main thing is 
percussion
or drums, and you're driving the rhythm in real time on every eighth note
(or whatever).

> >2) Someone like me who comes from a traditional music background
> (blues and
> >jazz) automatically thinks in terms of traditional song structures like
> >A-A-B-A. How many people on this list have actually tried to loop a
> >traditional verse-verse-chorus-verse song? I've been working at it for a
> >year, and it's frustrating. The Repeater fixes the bar length
> with the first
> >recorded track, so forget an AABA song where the "B" section is
> a different
> >number of bars, unless you want to get into a Midi pedal tap dancing
> >nightmare of arming and switching between loops.
>
> seems to me your problem is specific with the repeater, not
> looping. That's
> simple to deal with in the Echoplex. The boomerang might be able to do it
> too, I'm not sure. The jamman had the same problem of forcing all
> the loops
> to be the same length.

Okay, so the EDP is better at structured AABA song format looping? If so, I
need to read the manual and see if this offers some things the Repeater
doesn't.

> To some extent too, think about arrangement. what the hell are
> you talking
> about AABA where you've recorded multiple overdubs over the A loop before
> you ever get to B? Or bass and rhythm and lead while also talking about
> looping with multiple people? Can't the bass player make his own loop?

This is in the context of solo performance, sorry if that wasn't clear. I
don't have a bass player. My bass player is my thumb on the bottom two
strings of my guitar.

> i would suggest you at least try and echoplex and see if it works for 
>you.
>

That might be in my future at some point, and thanks for the feedback!

Mike Barrs