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Re: SOME THOUGHTS ON THE STATE OF THE LOOP



On 23 jan 2006, at 15.36, mark sottilaro wrote:

> Other than a few friends and love partners I
> don't think I've ever seen a non audience member at
> one of the loopfests.


Yes, that may be correct if the gig is announced as "loopfest" or  
whatever in that vein. But there is also another way:  if you  
actively seek out just any audience out there to confront them with  
your music without much "arty presentation". Seven days ago I was  
more or less driven into that scenario from circumstances I wasn't  
totally aware of, initially...

I had been booked to play at a "beer bar" on their traditional "folk  
singers night". I warned The Man that I was going to play  
instrumentally and improvised and "nothing catchy at all", but they  
asked me to come and play anyway because they would like "a broad  
program" for the night. So I brought a saxophone, Möbius laptop,  
FCB1010 pedal and two small Faderfox hand MIDI button mixers to catch  
the tube.

Well at the place it was kind of scaring to see the audience and hear  
the first three acts. Some were rather good and some were quite lousy  
(easy to hear which major artists they tried to mimic) but they all  
performed Well Known Cover Songs. So I really thought no one would  
like my music at all when I got on stage. In the kind ambition of  
being less "abstract" I started to beatbox a rhythm into a loop. Then  
I created, on a second track, three loops that corresponded to three  
major chords and kept playing  melodies through different  
combinations of those chords - while also inserting new notes into  
the chords (on passing by) to make the whole tune morph a little.  
Some twelve minutes into the twenty minutes gig I created a new very  
long loop on a third track while mixing down the beat track and the  
chords track - I thought this could be some nice chilly part with  
floating spaces... kind of ;-)   Finally I noticed I had only two  
minutes left so I mixed in the two groovy tracks again, hacked it up  
a bit by Susbst Insert with zero feedback and finally kicked the  
"empty all looping tracks" button on a rather loud "bruuup" note.

Dead silence. I had forgot to check out the audience, although I had  
heard them talking here and there while I was playing and now I just  
thought they were so happy because I had stopped playing "bizarre non  
folk singer music". But I was totally wrong! About sixty percent  
really liked it and many came up to me for a chat, wanting to tell me  
how much they had appreciated "hearing something different and cool".  
Some put on a satanic grin and thanked me for confronting "those poor  
souls that didn't get what you were doing" (the other 40 percent) and  
some guys said they had had a great time studying the face expression  
of everyone in the audience while I was playing.  I could tell not  
many of them had understood what I had actually been doing, in a  
technical meaning, but who cares as long as they liked the show! One  
guy in particular thought I had brought with me "prerecorded parts  
that I triggered from foot pedals". Strange, because this guy used to  
be a musician himself (having played with a "local hero" Swedish guy  
that once was responsible for having Albert Ayler recorded when AA  
was here in the sixties). Wow! I also picked up a booking for quite  
prominent "arty" gig later on, since a certain person happened to be  
at that beer bar by a lucky coincidence. Maybe they liked me because  
they actually were there for the beer and socializing and not very  
fond of folk singer amateurs and my gig simply made it possible for  
them to finally "come out"?  ;-)   Well, a funny night it was.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.looproom.com (international)
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
--->  iTunes Music Store (digital)
www.cdbaby.com/perboysen