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Re: Composition & Improvisation (was Re: Terje Rypdal was ECM guitarists)



Well, in two of my recent looping gigs the midi input failed
completely in song 1, and I had to totally abandon all plans to loop!
(fortunately, they were both duo settings!)

Seriously, I have found fixed pieces to be a little too rigid to work
for me in a live looping context (some people, like Amy X., pull them
off with awe-inspiring precision, but have less improv).  Somehow, in
trying to *re*-create a piece, I often lose the flow I might otherwise
be in touch with - it's not a problem when playing familiar guitar
songs, but once looping technology is involved, the price of mistakes
seems to go up. So better to be in a context where mistakes are harder
to make. It's worse to try and force something that's not gelling than
to be a little slow in transitioning to the next interesting thing,
imo, learned somewhat painfully from experience. Of course, everyone
is different.

Better, I think, to have a set of fallback *strategies* than pieces,
in the vein of Eno's oblique strategies, but more looping specific;
e.g. "throw 1 random sound into a very short loop and then go straight
into multiply" (like the piece I posted here a couple of days ago). or
"record a totally new loop, play over it for a short time, then undo".
 or just "switch to a patch that might be more inspiring".

On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 4:02 PM, Mark Hamburg <mark@grubmah.com> wrote:
>
> Playing without a net is what I end up doing. Sometimes it goes well. 
>Sometimes I'm running on empty and I wish I had some material to fall 
>back on.
>
> Mark
>
> On Aug 28, 2009, at 7:17 AM, Warren Sirota wrote:
>
>> Sorry if this sounds flip, but I'd just say, play without a net. (i
>> say this without having followed any of the previous thread that
>> spawned this)
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Mark Hamburg<mark@grubmah.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> When I was last in conscious recording mode -- as opposed to, the 
>recorder
>>> happens to be running while I'm playing -- the approach I found myself
>>> taking was to improvise until I found something I liked, then hone in 
>on
>>> various elements of it playing the "piece" repeatedly until I had the 
>flow
>>> down, then record it possibly doing a couple takes while doing so. 
>Having
>>> then committed the piece to some form of recording medium, I would then
>>> proceed to let it flow back out of my brain which was fine until I 
>found
>>> myself in a live performance situation with no material to fall back 
>on.
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Warren
>> http://www.warrensirota.com
>>
>>
>



--
Warren
http://www.ubetoo.com/Artist.taf?_ArtistId=6679
http://www.warrensirota.com