Re: Deconstructing Vocal Looper Martin O.

[Warren Sirota <wsirota@wsdesigns.com>]

For me, the dance moves were a little hokey, but I liked the bit for
what it was - a very short showcase performance where someone had
about 3 minutes to make an impression. For my part, I'm always
impressed when someone does spot-on vocal harmony in a looper, but
maybe that's just because I hold good singers in more awe than I do
most other musicians (it's the one thing that seems impossible for me,
regardless of how much time I spend at it - everything else at least
*seems* possible).

At any rate, I tend to judge a performance like this by its
effectiveness in context rather than by some absolute scale of musical
values. I liked it, it made me grin when I saw the business he was
doing with the mic positioning. I wouldn't watch it twice. I guess,
though, that the looping may be a "gimmick" in this act, in a sense -
I might rather hear this guy's carefully thought-out and edited
recorded arrangements than a live performance, if he proved to be an
interesting lyricist.

Performance pieces like this won't go over well for very much longer,
as the general public will become more and more aware of looping and
will cease to go wow over parlor tricks. Yet, I must confess, much of
what I do at this phase in my meta-instrument development, is to see
if I can coax the gear into more interesting parlor tricks, in the
hopes that I can get the nerds in this crowd to go wow a bit. (pls
dont take offense - i'm totally a nerd myself, and of course you're
all sensitive artist types, at the same time being extremely manly or
womanly or childly as appropriate, and not the least bit nerdy,
really. whew).

Warren "The Gear Made Me Do It" Sirota
warrensirota.com