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You've sort of depicted the idiom of Jazz, Per. Melody, tension and release, improvisation, not too sweet or sappy (like Kenny G). In jazz a lot of the interaction and musicican conversations between musicians is about melody and harmony, the function of chords, direction, resolution, etc. Heck, in hard core bebop in the 50s, sax players used to play with just a bass player and drummer...no chordal instrument. They didn't need them. When soloist do their thing, the piano or guitar player comping tries to compliment them, match their coloration, alteration, and syncopation...they listen really hard to hear these nuances and work with them...use chordal call and response, and so on. To me, YOU think like a improvisatioal jazz musician, not a pop musician or conventional musician - and I place myself in that category as well not because of my influences alone, but because I like melody and telling a story with a solo rather than just playing layers upon layers of textural backgrounds, but "outside" melody, which is relative to a tonal center and heavy on the tension side. Whole books have been written about this tonal center concept and tension/release...and more importanly the target note method, where a melody starts outside the tonal center but "directs" itself toward a resolution point. These are all concepts that jazz musicians, whether traditional, avant-garde, free, bebop, etc. understand, and which you seeem to grasp quite well. You can listen to a musician at a performance, and usually tell within the first 10 minuted whether they think like a jazz musician or a conventional or pop musician. It's not a comparison to degrade, only a factual one based on technique and use of melody and harmony. I wish you played more avant-garde jazz, Per. I bet you would kick butt at it. Maybe you have, but I haven't found your sound clips. Cheers, Kris -----Original Message----- From: Per Boysen [mailto:per@boysen.se] Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 1:14 AM To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com Subject: Re: Strategies (was: Re: Improv loops (was Re: Upcoming gig) On Jun 14, 2005, at 23:57, Edwin Hurwitz wrote: > I am curious how many of us use looping as a way of playing more > "conventional" music and how many of us are making the beeps and > bloops? I'm not sure that I correctly understand the (eventual?) difference between those two concepts, but I can try to answer for myself. I guess I usually do both when looping. As an improvising musician I have always tended to work a lot with melodies. That's something that others might like but I have always felt a bit alienated by the melodic side, maybe being afraid of the music to stand out as "too sweet". So to compensate that melodic side, that I seem not being able to escape, I have always put effort into developing an interesting tone; be it in physical instruments that I play or by plain programming of electronics. "The beeps and bloops" is one way to create such an interesting tone. Does that qualify me as a player of "conventional" music? ;-) To be a bit more general I must say that I like listening to music that appears to lack melodic elements. But I don't like listening to music that have no direction, no question and answer dialogue, no tension building up and no letting go of tension. I like to think that the difference between music and noise is that music does imply directions in movement, which noise doesn't. I like listening to noise as well, BTW. But I find it very difficult to play noise, there is always a melodic element creeping in to it. So, to use that flavor you have to call in the machines. Does that make me a beep' n blooper? Greetings from Sweden Per Boysen www.looproom.com (international) www.boysen.se (Swedish) ---> iTunes Music Store (digital) www.cdbaby.com/perboysen