Re: WHAT COULD WE DO BETTER?...and why should we do it?

[Andre LaFosse <altruist@earthlink.net>]

Hi Rick,

I actually agree with a number of your pet peeves here (stop the press,
I know), but I want to suggest looking at this from a couple of
different perspectives.

Someone once said that being a live performer involves being "an
exaggerated version of yourself," and I think there's a lot of truth to
that.  (Especially if we're talking about using a technology which
literaly does that very thing in a musical sense.)  Some people are
energetic extroverts, others are sardonic comedians, others still are
mysterious enigmas.  A big part of how they come across onstage is going
to begin with who and what they are before they get onstage.

So to me, talking about eye contact, or using lights, or taking live
solos over loops, or what sort of drum machine programming to use,
becomes almost impossible to discuss in any sort of general sense,
because it lacks any specific context to give it meaning.  

Taken on its own, it's like talking about what kinds of chord changes a
person should play over, or how a song should be structured, or whether
people should sit or stand when they play.  These all depend on what
kind of music someone's playing, what kind of personality they have as
performers, and how those things are working together to frame the
audience's perception.  

And there's nothing more cringe-inducing than seeing someone who's
self-consciously doing some kind of hollow, contrived on-stage gesture
just because it's an accepted signifier of being "engaging" or
"dynamic," when it clearly lacks any meaningful connection to who they
are as performers or people.

The one universal truth that seems to apply to performers and audiences
is that a player who knows what they're doing, and has something to say,
is almost always more engaging than someone who doesn't.

So before anyone can worry about how to translate their playing to an
audience, they need to be able to play without an audience.  That's the
first and foremost place to look at: does the music work as music?  If
you ignore any technological cleverness, real-time dexterity, or other
technical considerations, and just deal with it as an unfolding musical
event...  does it hold up?  

If not, then that's the first thing to deal with - before you can ask an
audience to connect with your music, you've got to connect with it
yourself.  That means woodshedding, recording yourself and critiquing
the bits that need improvement when you listen back.  

It helps to compare what you do to other music in the same genre - not
other people who loop, but other people who are operating in the same
general aesthetic and stylistic space that you are, regardless of what
kind of gear is in their rack.  Don't ask listeners who know the musical
territory you're working in to lower their standards to accommodate the
extra effort involved in doing something in real time.  Raise yourself
to those existing standards instead.

Once the basic foundation of what you're doing is together, THEN is the
time to start thinking about how you want to translate it to an
audience.  And a translation will probably be in order, because some
things that sound great as recorded events might not be so interesting
as a live performance.

This is where a lot of Rick's issues should work themselves out: some
people can use eye contact to connect with an audience, and other people
will look like a deer caught in oncoming headlights.  Some people can
make live soloing and extended repetition elevate their music, but
others could bog down an otherwise engaging performance with gratuitous
and aimless noodling.  Funny facial expressions or outrageous clothes
that might help one player draw an audience in could completely
undermine someone else's vibe.  A drum machine pattern that sounds flat
and canned for one player might work perfectly in someone else's recipie
for performance, where it's surrounded by a whole different set of
musical and gestural ingredients.

It's like picking out a wardrobe - a suit and tie projects a person
differently than a t-shirt and jeans.  The only way to figure this out
is personal trial and error.

And ultimately, I don't think any of this is unique to looping - it has
to do with the craft of performing music for an audience, and that isn't
going to instrinsically change based on the presence or absence of a
long delay line in someone's rig.

--Andre LaFosse
The Echoplex Analysis Pages:
http://www.altruistmusic.com/EDP