Re: Looping with other musicians, new tools=new results

["Steve Lawson" <steve@steve-lawson.co.uk>]

>>>"If you're playing with other musicians, and the collective tempo
shifts, and you've already recorded a loop with tempo-dependent
information, then I don't see how you can "adjust" the loop. "<<<

So why try? why not adjust the musicians? When it comes to playing along
with Loops, some people 'get it', some people don't. If you have a listen 
to
my duo CD with Jez Carr - 'Conversations', he clearly 'gets it' dispite
never having done any looping at that point himself. He just understands
that the establishment of the rhythmic framework is down to the looper.

The alternative is to use loops that don't require other people to be in
time with it - I quite often put down loops of all kinds in group 
situations
that even if they are rhythmic, aren't dependent on other following the 
same
rhythm. That's a tricky one to explain, but it works. At the risk of 
turning
this into a plug for my CDs, my next album is a duet CD with Theo Travis, a
looping sax/flautist, and we're quite often both using fairly rhythmic
unsync'd loops without any sense of them being 'out of time'.

I had a gig last weekend with a keyboardist call Patrick Wood who likewise
was great at hearing where a particular loop was going, what it implied or
didn't about the rhythm of the piece and responded accordingly. As a 
result,
we had a great gig! :o)

Drummers are harder to deal with in this respect, as they are used to being
the band metronome, but I've even met kit players who can follow a loop...

BTW - at the gig with Patrick, it was very nice to meet up with David
Swain - it's always fun to put a face to a LD personality! :o)

cheers

Steve
www.stevelawson.net