Re: How does Schon Sync?

[kflint@annihilist.com (Kim Flint)]

>On Sun, 17 Nov 1996, Kim Flint wrote:
>
>> Another rocker using loopers is Neal Schon of Journey.
>> He does a couple of things with them live. One is the obvious,
>> looping a rhythm part so that he can solo over it. For a band like 
>Journey
>> its pretty important to duplicate the recorded versions fairly 
>accurately,
>> and the loopers make the overdubbed parts on the album doable live.
>
>OK, here's a question: Does Schon's drummer play to a click, to which the
>Echoplex is also synched?

I'm not sure, but I suspect he doesn't.


>I ask because it seems to me that getting a perfectly in-sync loop of a
>rhythm guitar part that the drummer (and the rest of the band) can
>reliably play to is an extremely dubious proposition.

Is it? We're talking about a band full of very competent musicians. They've
all logged thousands of hours of studio and live playing time. I imagine
that playing in stadiums is where you really learn how to maintain a groove
under adverse sound conditions! When you can't hear the rest of the band,
or even see them, the way you make it work is by maintaining a very steady
tempo and trusting the others to do the same.

I doubt that they do anything exotic with the looping. I think Neal just
records the loop, and the band plays to it. The reason it works is that
these guys have a very good sense of rhythm. Neal's rhythm guitar playing
is very tight, and so are his loops. When he records a loop, the timing is
about as perfect as you could ask for.

>Playing a rhythmic, strictly in-time loop, and triggering the start/stop
>points manually from a footpedal, is a quite demanding task.  Take all of
>the possible rhythmic quirks that could crop up in that process, and then
>compund that with the entire band having to groove to the loop, and what
>have you got?  A potential train wreck.

I've seen plenty of bands having trouble grooving together no matter what
they did. I think its a question of musicianship and practice.

Most people, especially guitar players, have trouble recording loops in
time at first. It takes a while to realize that the action with your foot
on the pedal is a musical event, and has to be done in rhythm. I've helped
an awful lot of guitar players through this first step. You'd be amazed at
how many people tap the record button, and then start playing a moment
later.

With practice, you get much better at recording your loops in rhythm. It
forces you to improve your own sense of time. Looping certainly did that
for me. Like any aspect of your music, with practice, you get better.

Neal Schon has spent hundreds of hours practicing and working with his
echoplexes. He uses them really well, and never has problems getting the
loops in time. Of course it doesn't hurt that his sense of rhythm is
amazingly good.

It's easy for me to poke fun at Journey and Neal, being journey and all,
but he really is a pretty good musician. When I was first showing him how
to use the Echoplex, for some reason he decided to record a solo first, and
overdub the rhythm part. He had over 30 seconds worth of rock guitar solo
looping, and starts overdubbing chord progressions with it. I'm thinking
"you can't do that, it's impossible to get that in time. I'm never gonna be
able to teach this guy to do this right."  He stops playing the rhythm
part, and I realize that its perfectly in time with the solo, and that he
finished playing exactly at the end of a pretty long loop. Not only that,
the solo he played in the first place was in time and was an even number of
beats in length so that it fit perfectly into an ordinary sort of rock
progression. My respect for his musicianship went up a lot right then,
because I sure as hell couldn't do that.

But really, looping in rhythm with or without other musicians just takes
some practice. Neal represents an example that this is possible. If you
play with people who actually listen to what the others are doing, its not
hard to integrate looping into a band situation. It might not work out
right at first, but then what does? Just work at it a bit and you'll get
it. Its easier than playing Giant Steps!

kim

______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                   | Looper's Delight
kflint@annihilist.com       | http://www.annihilist.com/loop/loop.html
http://www.annihilist.com/  | Loopers-Delight-request@annihilist.com