Re: roots

[Dave Stagner <dstagner@icarus.net>]

On Sun, 6 Oct 1996, Matthias wrote:

> >Repeated phrases, with rising and falling intensity, have been a part of
> >music for a long, long time I think. Its in music from all over the 
>world,
> >in all different cultures. If anything, a bit less in European Classical
> >music, but its certainly present there too.

I find it kind of hard to imagine music without repetition.  In
repetition is recognition, and the thrill of discovering a pattern.
Of course, if the recognition is too easy, the music is boring, and if
it is too difficult, the music is incomprehensible.  I really like
music with lots of interlocking, repeating patterns where the
listener's attention can shift from line to line, and the contrasts
between the lines.  Like West African music, or looping.

> >I may even hazzard that this sort of repetition is an important part of
> >making something "musical." I know I often find myself losing interest 
>in
> >music that keeps going on to something new with out ever repeating
> >anything, while music that does repeat on various levels keeps me 
>involved.
> >Seems to happen in experimental/academic music where the composer is 
>trying
> >to explore some new idea while apparently forgetting some of the old 
>ones.
> >(oddly enough, I enjoy creating music like that; I should heed my own
> >advice I think!)

Sometimes we make music because we *have* to, not because we *want*
to.  I've made a lot of music that I personally dislike, but I felt I
needed to make.  

An interesting case study here is the improvisational voice of Bill
Frisell.  Almost unique among jazz soloists, he uses almost no
repetition of themes in his solos.  Of course, he also uses looping to
build backgrounds to play against.  :}  

Something else I find interesting is musicians who can repeat a line,
but use different inflections each time they play it.  David Torn is a
master of this, as are many others who treat each note as a unique
entity, rather than part of a "line", without independent importance
(it's just personal bias, but the endless 16th note scales and
arpeggios of Al DeMiola, Charlie Parker, and others just bore me).
This is why I'm currently experimenting with mixers, to be able to
feed a loop back out to a processor, and back in on itself, so the
sound evolves as it loops. 

> For me, there are the two phases: walking (traveling to places you only 
>go
> once) and resting (come back to the same bed every night), developing and
> harvesting. Loops help for both, but are more obvious for the resting.
> Some of the nicest recording of mine happened *after* the loop had faded
> and I played real solo, but really relaxed and inspired because of the 
>loop
> that before. And in those phases we often modulating like classical music
> without ever coming back. This "anti-loop" kind of music is very little
> explored. It asks for a lot of atention by the listener (not to miss the
> bus), while the loop kind just enters mind for free.

This makes me think of the Western classical theory ideals of tension
and resolution.  In classical-descended music, this is done mostly
with harmony.  I don't know how many jazz theory books I've read that
defined "movement" in terms of tension and resolution.  The cool thing
about looping (and all the various repetitive, non-harmonic world
musics this theory implicitly ignores) is that you have motion WITHOUT
tension and resolution.  The motion doesn't go away just because
you're not playing at the moment.  The loop is still moving.  And once
you've abandoned the idea of tension/resolution, you can abandon it
for the "walking", too.  You can just play, without setting up clear
goals. 

I was just thinking of the music of Edgar Varese.  He often composed
for just percussion, or percussion and brass/woodwinds.  One of my
favorites is a percussion/horn piece that just comes in waves and
waves of chaotic sound.  It's a composed loop.  I'm almost certain he
was trying to simulate the effect of a migraine headache.  That's just
what it sounds like to me.  Hurts like hell to listen to.

> >Technology gives us new instruments that make repetition easier. It also
> >lets us approach this concept in new ways that were never there before.
> >This is what the various looping tools we discuss are all about, and 
>what
> >the attraction is.
> 
> Very well, Kim!

Yes, looping has obviously touched us all on some very deep level, as
musicians.  We should think about this philosophically, to try to
understand our emotional reaction to this method of performance,
composition, and improvisation. 

> >I think the question still remains from a few weeks ago. How did the
> >technology driven approach get started? Who were the first ones to make
> >tape loops? It seems there were quite a few people doing this by the 
>mid to
> >late sixties, but where did they get it from? I've heard that the first
> >tape delays were done in radio stations, but I don't know who or when. 
>And
> >who were the early ones applying it to music? For that matter, did it
> >really start with tape? Was there anything before that?

Conlon Nancarrow was composing for player piano back in the 1940s,
largely to develop repeating figures at a level of precision human
musicians are simply incapable of performing.  Edgar Varese used tape
loops in his musique concrete performance for the 1951 World's Fair,
although that was probably done manually with copying, cutting, and
mixing.  And there's an Erik Satie piano piece that specifies hours
and hours of repetition, enough to make it nearly impossible to play.  

Hope I haven't muddied the waters even more. 

-dave

By "beauty," I mean that which seems complete.
Obversely, that the incomplete, or the mutilated, is the ugly. 
Venus De Milo.
To a child she is ugly.       
   -Charles Fort              dstagner@icarus.net