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Looper's Delight
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Well I guess I started improvising before I got into looping, but the two certainly go together well. I got into looping because of my love of Congolese pop music - 70s soukous, those sparkling guitars - & a 4-second delay pedal (Arion DDS-4) gave me an alter-ego to develop funky riffs with. Mind you, before that I'd been messing with a couple of reel to reel tape recorders, magnetic pick-ups, electric fires, hacksaw blades (& the occasional guitar!), so there's history there. The advent of digital looping technology made it possible to do all that sound-on-sound stuff live, at the London Musicians' Collective, short-lived clubs in back rooms of pubs, occasionally in concert halls, on tour, but always completely, 100%, improvised. Yep, starting a set with absolutely no preparation whatsoever is the preferred route for me. Once, at Hugh Metcalf's Klinker club, a music therapist approached me after a set that had admittedly completely got out of my control in a sort of 'noise/chaos' way, and asked me what traumatic episode in my childhood had caused me to create such painful music? She said she hadn't heard anything so distressing since Lutoslawski! I took this as a compliment! I should add that I also enjoy listening to 'total improv'. For me, the process is often as interesting as the result. It doesn't 'work' every time, maybe, but I'd rather hear musicians taking risks & it not always happening, than just playing safely b& predictably. There's enough of that around. A musician once said to me after a rather free, improvised, definitely not jazz, piece at a Bimhuis 'jam session': "When you're a sailor, you have to go with the wind." I couldn't have put it more eloquently. Dave ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 10.0.1204 / Virus Database: 1435/3452 - Release Date: 02/18/11