RE: "Live Looping"

["Tom Rex" <tomrex1@cox.net>]

Title: Re: "Live Looping"

I think we’re getting there in defining what a lot of us like to do:

 

1. It’s live.
2. it’s mostly improvised.
3. It’s looping.
4. It’s technical.
5. It’s not a genre.

 

Even I am starting to get it.

 

I was reflecting today on one of the 1^st live looping performances:  

 

1. JS Bach was playing live,
2. before an audience, that included the King,  
3. improvising on the Royal Theme,
4. in canon form,
5. on a new fangled instrument, the forte-piano,
6. that had dynamics!

 

Later, when he got home, he wrote it up, from memory, and sent it back to the King as A Musical Offering.  There’s another dynamic happening here, since they liked to read, not only play, music, but music as a text.  They used to hide all sorts of things in the score, which they then would try to decipher.  So there were code makers, and code breakers, and it was, and still is, a game.

 

When I first started doing computer music last year, I did a little re-mix of that theme, on Cubase SL:

 

1. It wasn’t live.
2. it wasn’t improvised.
3. It was looping.
4. It was sort of technical.
5. I named it, and several that I did afterwards, as Classical Loops, although not necessarily classical music.
6. And I used no dynamics, because I didn’t know how.

 

When I joined this list, because of my interest in looping, I was lost.  What I heard everyone saying, and what I was doing, were different things.  But slowly, I started to get it, with some help from people on the list.  And what I got, for me, was that I’ve been a performing musician most of my life, and pecking away with a mouse, at a computer wasn’t going to cut it.  Another thing was the Taoist / Zen thing of being in relationship with my instrument, to really get to know it.

 

My first step back to performing was to get Ableton Live, and an Evolution UC-33 midi controller.  And that’s a lot of fun.

 

My next step was to get a workstation, the Fantom-S.  For me, this was great, because I could use it as a midi controller, and as an instrument in its own right.  More importantly, as a live, performing instrument.  It’s also a sampler, and you’re able to record in loop mode, with overdub capabilities (see, I am learning).  I’m still learning how to use it, but two things so far were very exciting.  My first loop that I performed, just layering some notes, and later experimenting with the delay and other effects.  Now I’m starting to get an inkling of what you all are talking about.  It’s sort of amazing that you can play a few notes, or chords, through the effects, and let the sounds just develop.  And it seems that it takes as much skill to play the effects, as it does the notes and chords.

 

The one skill I don’t have is engineering, so I’m sort of slow on the technical end.  And that’s where some of you have an advantage over just being a musician.  Sometimes, I feel that makes the difference to belonging to the in group, vs. just being on the list.  I don’t know.  What do the rest of you feel about this?

 

On the other hand, I have an interest in the cultural and anthropological aspects of music, although I would not call myself a musicologist.  I guess we all have our talents.

 

Tom