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Looper's Delight
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On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, Petri Lahtinen wrote:Yeah, Miro Mantere is a master of making a 30 minute live looping single song that just builds and builds
I'm with Gareth here. Dont mind if someone builds his looping song for 30 minutes, if the shit is good! :-)
with intensity. It's just very rare in my experience. It's just my aesthetic so I don't mean to try and
convince everyone of it, but too much canned shit loses me, emotionally when I listen to a live looper
even if the loops are built quicker with such elements included. If a musician is creatively engaging the audience
with their construction of a piece of music (witness, Miro's last loopfestival performances) I don't think it is
destructive or counterproductive to take time to build a looping piece. Honestly, I think most live loopers
fear an audiences boredom more than the audience actually feels boredom in such a case. Of course,
performance aspects that are non musical can have a salutory effect on a performance. In other words,
though I agree with Gareth that pure musical content is vastly important in a performance, I honestly don't think it
is the end all and be all of all performance from an audience standpoint. NOT a musicians' standpoint.
In fact, from my experience as a performing musician in dozens of
different kinds of contexts (from live looping to solo performing to small or large band performances in many different
genres), I would say that pure music rarely makes up the largest part of a musical performance and it's effectiveness.
Visual presentation, audience interaction, even lighting and multi-media presentation can have a huge effect on
audience response.
Everything shouldn't be gauged by listener response, of course, but I've taken to watching audiences' responses to performances at the looping festivals just as much as listening to the performers and a lot can be garnered from watching what flies and what engages and what doesn't. It shouldn't be the only thing that guides a performers decisions........indeed,
sometimes I think it's an artists' responsibility to even educate an audience or to challenge them with
new modes of expression............but it is interesting to watch.
Being forced to be as present as possible by MCing 36 continual hours of each looping festival
has been really instructive to me about trying to keep an audience engaged.
It's always fascinated me that there are performers like Lilli Lewis, who uses an RC-2, a microphone and her voice
for an entire 30 minutes and has an audience just riveted from top to bottom. She takes a long time to build her
loops, too. but there is something very visceral and 'real' about her performances, despite being some of the
lowest tech shit to come down the pike in a long time at the festival.