Re: Okay, let's get philosophical: Performance Theory time

[improv@peak.org (Dave Trenkel)]

On the issue of live performance of looped music:

I saw a concert lately that, while not exactly loop music in the
Torn/Fripp/etc sense, used a lot of loops, sequences, pre-recorded music,
mixed with live musicians. The bands were Loop Guru (great name,
multi-lingual pun), DJ Spooky and Meat Beat Manifesto. There were 3 very
different approaches to live performance in an electronic setting, with
very divergent results. Loop Guru had 5 people on stage, 3 percussionists,
a bassist/guitarist, and a female vocalist. Their approach seemed to be
that the musicians provided the visual element, while most of the sound was
sequenced (or possibly playing from DAT, I really couldn't tell). The
bassist played very simple lines, while executing every tired guitar as
penis substitute arena-rock stage move. The vocalist danced more than she
sang. The percussionists jumped around a lot. Bluntly, they sucked, even
though the music was kind of interesting. It just seemed that the musicans
sound was not particularly integral to the overall sound, and that they
were just there for show.

DJ Spooky, as I mentioned in an earlier post, was fully transcendental.
With 2 turntables and some effects, he created an amazing live collage that
was closer to a jazz improvisation than dance music. One thing that made
his performance so amazing was that even though he was using pre-recorded
materials, the entire structure and ordering (and decosnstruction) of the
materials was totally dynamic.

Meat Beat Manifesto had a live drummer, a keyboardist and a guitarist on
stage, in addition to Jack Dangers, who sings and pretty much plays
everything on their records. They did a good job of balancing the sequenced
material with the live material. It was clear that Dangers was doing live
mixing from the stage, and there was a loose and dynamic quality to the
performance that I appreciated.

As far as my own experiences, I have played totally improvised music for
the last few years, in a couple of contexts. One is a power trio called
Minus, in which I play bass and occaisional live electronics. The guitarist
and I both use JamMans (JamMen? JamMani?), but looping is just one of many
techniques we use. We're very intense, at best we approach a certain
shamanic vibe, and I don't particularly worry about visuals because the
music requires such total concentration. I think we're not uninteresting
visually, because there's is a pretty direct correlation between what the
audience sees and hears, like when I'm bowing the bass with a
serrated-knife, and the audience connects the ugly arhythmic glob of noise
with that.

The other context in which I perform is a pretty quiet, though I would not
call it ambient, live electro/acoustic group sometimes called Sleep
Deprivation. It ranges from a duet to a quartet with different musicians,
often a percussionist or acoustic/electric guitarist. I play
computer-controlled synths, samplers and effects, using real-time control
software I've written in MAX, no sequencing or tapes, with a lot of live
looping and sampling of the other musicians. While this stuff is sonically
interesting,I've been told by audience members that it's hard to understand
just what I'm doing. I'd rather that the listener's just concentrated on
the sound, but since the music is difficult and often unfamiliar to them,
some people want a visual component to help them "get" it. I haven't really
figured out how to do this, though Louis Hyams recent message about
visualizing computer information has some interesting possibilities.

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Dave Trenkel, NEW EMAIL ADDRESS: improv@peak.org
self promotional web-site: http://www.peak.org/~improv/
"A squid eating dough in a polyethelene bag is fast
and bulbous, got me?"
                                     -Captain Beefheart
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