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Looper's Delight
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On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, andy butler wrote: > However, from my perspective I'd say that I'd seen you > re-create what is essentially the same 'piece' at more than > one show. > It could be as simple as using the same instrument with the > same loop techniques, but I got the impression there was > a bit more to it than that. Yeah, of course, I see what you say, and there have been some themes that keep popping up in my music, for sure............certainly sets of instruments that lend themselves to themes and , even occasionally, a melody that gets repeated......... I think, specifically, of a piece that I have done that uses an Orange bottle whose body I play that has a very limited melodic range controlled by the size of the opening. I think I"ve probably played that piece more than any other, but the melody is constrained by the object that I use. I think I only have about a 4th of an interval and I'm not fond of major scales so it comes out minor each time. Lol, I also have played some shows with specific conventional instruments whose grasp of are so tenuous that I have , literally, only learned the one melodic approach that I originally learned on the instrument. I think, specifically, of a piece I've done with Shakuhachi flute and a piece I've done with Armenian Duduk...........both so difficult for me to play that I've just put enough hours into them to play one scale that I like. My performances are also constrained when I tour to the amount of instruments I can physically carry with me. By the end of a 2 month tour of Europe and the UK as an example, I'm sick to death of the instruments I carry with me, largely because when I"m in the US, I mostly take a completely different set of instruments to every show I do. One year at the Boise Creative and Experimental Music Festival I actually went next door to a thrift store and purchased 1/2 of my set, whose 'found' instruments I left at the venue when I was done. So, if you take all the performances I've done over the years (and I play lots of different kinds of festivals, not just looping festivals) the lion share of all of my performances are actually improv pieces. One thing I dearly love to do is pick a set of timbres (or instruments) and walk onto stage without a thought in my head and then just follow what comes out. Again, just because of who I am as an artist, there will be themes that emerge. I like minor keys as an example and love a few ethnic scales that I tend to gravitate to (Lydian, b7 or the Rag Bairav: 1,b2, m3,4,5,b6,m7,8va). I tend to gravitate to rhythms as well..........I just adore playing anything in 12/8 with all of it's polyrhythmic possibilties and I love 5/4, 10/8 (in both 3322 and 3223 variants), 7/8, 9/8 and many different African, MiddleEastern, Indian, Caribbean, Balkan rhythms that I've studied over the years so those will be non-improv aspects. And, like you say, I use several different live looping and digital processing approaches that I use over and over. This past year I've been obsessed with distortion and fuzz and it's constraint, timbrally, as an example: fond of playing a fretless stratocaster that is either tuned to an open tuning or most usually, to an entire set of D.......all of which are purposefully tuned just a few cents off from each other (to excite the harmonics) So, yeah, not pure improv, I suppose, but a hell of a hell of a lot of improv compared to most musicians I know. I'd probably be a hell of a lot more popular if I didn't favor changing things up all the time, frankly, but I've also loved being free to do just that.