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On Feb 27, 2005, at 22:29, Emile Tobenfeld (a.k.a Dr. T) wrote: > My music tends to involve setting up a bunch of simultaneous complex > processes and then interacting with them. There is too much going on > for me to be in control of each process simultaneously -- so my 'big > ears' (such as they are) need to be applied selectively to determine > which process can use my attention., which can be let alone, and which > has warn out its welcome and need to be stopped or muted. This is a > lot easier in a solo situation. I like to think about human perception of music as "gestures". No matter the amount of instruments, musicians or looping effect boxes involved - my favorite number of "gestures" is three! In music I like to listen to and play there is optimally three simultaneous gestures going on at the same time. On such gesture can be made up by tremendously complex details of sound, but I don't listen to the complexity at all when improvising. I listen to the gesture and let it accompany my own gestures. This gives that the perfect group for playing free improvisation is three musicians. When you are part of an improvising trio you can pretty much play things that differs from what the other play and it will still come out as meaningful music. As soon as there are more musicians you have to start looking for gestures in music that is not "the noise created by a singular musicians", i.e. musicians have to form cells within the group sound and such a cell should harness the same gesture. This is just what I have found out and it may not be relevant for everyone. But for me it works amazingly well both for composition, improvisation in group and "looping device enhanced group improvisation". In solo live-looping I tend to work on three gestures as well. It's easy to imply two gestures with just one instrument if you play lines in the "questions and answers" manner, and then a looping device can take on the third role. Greetings from Sweden Per Boysen --- http://www.looproom.com (international) http://www.boysen.se (Swedish site) http://www.cdbaby.com/perboysen