Re: Re: Living on a rock

[kflint@annihilist.com (Kim Flint)]

At 7:18 PM 3/17/97, Jim Morgan, speaking for himself, wrote:
>>Actually, that makes me wonder. I don't know much about Chinese music
>>traditions. Does anyone know if there are any looping parallels there, in
>>the way there are with other musics about the world?
>
>Stabbing mightily in the dark here, but I'd guess that the tricky tonal
>variations and rhythms would make traditional Chinese music a bit hard on 
>the
>ear if you loop it a lot and overlay it-- lotsa quarter tones don't sit on
>top of each other too well. In fact some of the Chinese opera you hear 
>around
>is a bit hard on the ear before you loop it......ow.

Well, it might be a bit hard on your ear, but I for one like them
microtonalities just fine! I think I must have gotten bored with the same
old 12 notes, because even the most altered scale/chords I can dream up
still sound pretty consonant to me. Here's a loop idea I found enjoyable
some time back:

I used my Fernandes sustainer guitar, but an ebow would work fine to, as
would a synth with pitch wheel or any instrument where you can keep a note
going and continuously vary the pitch. Sustain a note, and record a loop
with it. Keep holding the note with the overdub function on, so it starts
to get nice and thick. At some point in the loop, slowly bend or whammy the
note slightly out. Then slowly bring it back to the original pitch. Each
time through the loop, bend the note a little bit differently at that same
point. After a while, you end up with this loop where it sits statically on
this dreadful, ugly, consonant sound, and then slowly diverges into a
gloriously beautiful dissonance that makes the paint shrivel off the wall,
and then slowly pulls back together into that ugly boring sound again.
Tension and release, fun for all!

It works to switch to some related pitch for the consonant part, like a
fifth or octave, or a harmonic even.

have fun,

kim

______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                   | Looper's Delight
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