Re: Drumming with loops -- some methods (longish)

[matthias@bahianet.com.br (Matthias Grob)]

How nice, Eric. A real method.
Might find its place at Plaing Hints on the list, what do you think?


>1)With the loop:
>
>  a)If the loop is the same rhythm as the theme/riff (say the guitarist
>    locks in a loop of the riff, and then moves into a solo), this is
>    a fairly trivial case -- you can keep playing to the theme as you
>    have been. varying it as much or as little as you normally would.

I think this is the main case we have been talking about. Do you allways
easily hear acurately enough to follow? I understood from the other posts
that this was a problem?

>    fact that the loop is now doing something different.  In essence,
>    you are pretending that you the theme that you were playing with
>    is still present.

Maybe give the "yous" a fix before HTMLizing :-)

>Also note that when I do these things in the context of Gravitar, we don't
>have a bass player; this frees me up considerably as a drummer, both in
>terms of my freedom to react quickly without worrying so much about
>bass player following what I'm doing, as well as, in essence, making
>the drums the entirety of the "rhythm section".  I'm not necessarily
>advocating kicking the bass player out...but it's helped me in some ways.

Thats what I thought all the time, reading your methods.
But you probably have some bass sound that takes the space?
Someone said that in Reggae and other music, the bass is reference and not
the drums.
I think its the same in my music. I often start with a small high pitch
pingeling thing that shows the loop to me, but hardly to a drummer. Then
when the clima developps, suddenly I hear the bass line and record it,
usually using MULTIPLY (and using POLYSUBBASS polyphonic octave divider,
the cool way to kick out the bass player :-) ). Then the drum (percussion
in my case) can come in concretely.

So simple way is to have the bassplayer start his loop first, defining the
time. He may record just a few "corner" notes, giving a base for every one,
but also leaving space to "curve" around.
Then the guitars and soloists are free to record and distroy their loops
synced to the bass loop, without having to worry too much about timing.
For the drummer, the bass loop is an easy reference.

Another thing would be to leave the direction to the drummer and have him
send out a Beat Sync to the looper (well, all I am saying works with
ECHOPLEX, I am not sure about others...) to correct the loops of everyone
so they do not "run away".
The Sync signal could be the bass drum mic or a separate key you operate
regularely, I do not know how...maybe even a key under the HH pedal?

Did you never feel like having your own drum loop going, as a base and sync
reference for the others?

I feel that we need some more infos collected before we close the "Drumming
with loops" Hint.
But you did put us right on the way.

Thanks
Matthias

Maybe there will be a separate Hint: "Looping with drums" :-)