stretchy time

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

>>>>Maybe it's time now for Steve Lawson to chime in about the nature of
stretching time rhythmically whilst using
loops live.     He inspired me to really get into the whole Jam Karet
("time
is rubber" in Indonesian)
mentality when I'm doing a purely solo show.   Right now, he and Debhashish
Battycharya (the master Indian
classical slide guitarist who just got the Shakti gig with John McLaughlin
gig or so I'm told) are the only
people that I'd have confidence using these techniques with live while
using
loops.   It is a cool technique and
used minimally can also help one adjust to a 'lumpy' loop.

Steve,  if you are not too busy..............you want to take over here?
Maybe you could suggest a track from one of your CDs that
illustrates this technique that I"ve seen you use so many times in
performance.<<<

Ah, saved by a vanity search - been so busy recently, I've not been reading
all the stuff on LD, just selected highlights, so I head over to the site 
to
do a search on my name, and see if I've been mentioned elsewhere.. :oD

...and whaddya know, I have!

Anyway - stretchy time - the way I tend to think of it is to see the
rhythmic aspect of a loop as having a 'landscape' with peaks and troughs
that can be learnt - so rather than relying on your internal metronomic
clock, you've got a loop that expands and contracts where neccesary, and 
you
listen to it to pick up on that. If the stretches are happening in the
'right' places, it's fairly easy to follow, like speech patterns. If they
are in the wrong places, it's more likely that it stems from a lack of
control rather than an acute awareness of time, and it's time to 'shed a
little more on the whole vibe...

There are couple of reasons why this works - one is the speech pattern
analogy I just mentioned - things have a natural rhythm to them which may 
or
may not be metronomic (might I suggest that if you're using looping on a
version of 'good times' or 'le freak' that stretching the loop might cause
the track to lose a little of it's magic... ;o) - and certain lines will
certainly stretch over the bar lines. The most natural examples of this 
I've
come across are in some Tabla playing, and on really old blue recordings,
where you'd end up with 13and a half bar blues due to a particular fill at
some point in the tune that injected extra notes of a completely different
length in a way that felt totally natural.

The other reason is to do with the essence of music being in one way all
about tension and release. Often we think of tension and release being
harmonic, but it can be rhythmic as well (think of how a Tumbao flips in 
and
out of consonance with the clave in latin music) - so in a loop that's 
going
round and round, it's a good idea to inject a little rhythm ambiguity, some
tension and release, to give people different things to focus on as the 
tune
goes on. If the rhythm is really obvious, it may be that the listener has 
it
sussed second time through, and the mystery of the part is 'spent' after
only 30 seconds. If it's a bit more tricky to get a handle on, it may give
you more room to play...

As for examples from my own music - almost anything of mine that is 
rhythmic
stretches in one direction or another... the nearly rubato end of the scale
would be 'No More Us And Them' - the opening track from 'Not Dancing For
Chicken', and the more rhythmically defined version would be MMFSOG, the
track that follows it...

cheers

Steve
www.stevelawson.net (gig details, news, MP3s, paypal CD orders etc.)
www.pillowmountainrecords.co.uk (buy CDs)
www.pmrecords.gemm.com (buy the same CDs)
www.solobassnetwork.org.uk (other people making solo bass noises)