MORE LOOPS?

["RICK WALKER" <looppool@cruzio.com>]

Rainer Straschill wrote:
"Now think about the possibility to do some multi-track work here - have 
the
bass drum in one loop, the snare drum in another one and so one. With that,
you can now add some crazy ringmod to just the snare drum loop, or send the
bass drum through a reverb delay, or replace the cymbal part without
touching any of the other parts...you get the idea."

Of course, Rainer,  I am hip to this approach to using multiple tracks and
have done it a lot even back in the days when I had three synced Lexicon 
Jammans
(circa 1996).    I'm even about to add a second 6 space rack of Electrix 
tempo based
gear (MoFX, Filter Factory) with a patchbay to my 
local-more-produced-live-looping shows just to increase my
precision control utilizing this strategy.........unfortunately I'll be 
unable to tour with this much gear (not that it ever
has stopped Ted Killian.........lol)

 I think, however, from your response to me, that  you may have missed the 
point of what I'm saying.

I'm not trying to say that one shouldn't use multiple loops or that there 
aren't times when it
is very appropriate to use a very muli-layered approach,  but more that 
live 
loopers
can afford to question there constant desire to fill up arrangements with 
many different loops.

Max Valentino really hit the nail on the head of what I'm talking about by 
saying
"And even with many of the advanced processing powers of this current 
generation of both soft and hardware loopers, it still pretty much becomes 
the concept of filling a box until it overflows"

As with all things,  none of this critique is purely black and white.   I 
love some maximal musicians and I love some minimal musicians.
I think we all, with this in mind,  have noticed that inexperienced 
loopers 
fall into a tendency to fill the box until it overflows.

Our culture tends to be stronger on the teaching of Harmonic density and 
how 
to eschew it.  Consequently, it is easier for a guitarist, as an example
of avoiding stack their chords too densely for fear of having no room in 
their soloing.

Unfortunately,  our culture's educational environements tend to be very 
light on imparting the sister concepts of
Timbral Masking and Rhythmic Masking
and how understanding these concepts  can lead us to the  avoidance of 
dense, mushy,ineffective and 'overflowing' arrangements.