Re: questions for one and all

[John Pollock <johnpollock@delphi.com>]

MiqSk8@aol.com wrote, in part,

>what is it that all of us are trying to achieve
> by looping? i'm really interested in the sounds coming out of this group.
> Atmospheres? Textures? "Sound Carpets"? Precision Pointillism? Industrial
> Indigestion? or more of the compositional types of multiple loops 
>created on
> the fly and then swapped between? in other words a way to build 
>traditional
> sections of composition to be arranged. i realize this predates the 
>looper's
> cd, but i think it would be cool for us to get an idea of what's going on
> with all this equipment and talent and ...

For me, the answer is, paraphrasing David Torn, "My playing, but more of
it."  I crave the sound of a band, but seem to be incapable of finding
other musicians with musical objectives close enough to my own to make
it work.  So, for the past ten years, I've been playing with myself
(quite literally-- and I cheerfully acknowledge the validity of the
implication), adding (to my guitar and vocals) first harmonica, then
pedal keyboard/synthesizer, then MIDI guitar/synthesizer, subtracting a
drum machine, and finally (to date) adding a Vortex.  (Probably any
details you might be interested in are on my Web site, which is devoted
to tools and tips for the one-person band, so I won't go into them
here.)  I actually did this for what I laughingly called my living for
six years, but quit playing for money four years ago after it became a
job, and one I hated.

I've only been looping for a few months, and that on an extremely
limited basis, so I haven't achieved much.  I do have some pretty clear
goals, though:

1.  I've weaned myself from the drum machine, but still crave
percussion, and don't have any hands or feet free to play it.  Even if I
used it for nothing else, the Vortex gives me the capability to create
percussive loops (slapping the muted guitar strings, scraping them,
tapping a pickup, etc.) to fill that musical space-- without using
someone else's samples, and using sounds I create during the performance
of the piece itself.

2.  I'm not a very impressive singer, or guitarist, or performer in
general-- my strength, in the past, has been my songwriting (mainly the
lyrics, but the music for a few of them may rise a little above
ordinary).  This began to bother me, some while before I "retired."  I
began fantasizing about creating music that would not depend for its
success on my skill with the English language.  I remember thinking, the
second or third time I saw Bela Fleck and the Flecktones in concert,
"These folks are like Abba without vocals-- how could anyone in the
world _not_ respond to this music?"  Pierre Ben Susan and Badi Assad
have also strongly reinforced this urge.  But my technical skills are
far below any of these people.  If I'm to succeed, I'll have to (a) get
to a level where I'm using the technology _intelligently_ enough to make
the music really interesting, and (b) move beyond that to a level where
no one listening to my music, including myself, is consciously aware of
the technology.  I don't know if I can do it, but it seems a more
realistic objective than attempting to achieve the guitar fluency of Ben
Susan or Assad.  (I've been playing since before either of them was
born, and haven't managed it yet, so that hope seems pretty dim...)

3.  I've always been an accompaniment sort of guitarist, either
strumming or playing fingerstyle.  I was always content to leave the
distorted single-note wailing to others-- until I heard Sonny Sharrock
and Nicky Skopelites' _Faith Moves_.  Suddenly, I wanted to try to play
like Sonny (why did he have to go and die before I could hear him
live?).  But my left foot is no substitute for Nicky.  Just maybe, my
left foot and the Vortex can be.

4.  Before I started working as a one-person band, I played steel guitar
in country bands for a long time.  The pedal steel guitar put fewer
obstacles between me and the music than any other instrument or
combination of instruments I've tried.  But the way I played it, and the
ways I want to play it, don't work for me without accompaniment, and I
haven't had it out of the case in ten years.  Once I develop the ability
to loop on the fly with some consistency, I just may be able to play it
again.

So my looping efforts are primarily aimed at accompaniment.  I'm not
unaware of the possibility of making the loop the focus of the music,
and have experimented with gradually changing loops (very easy with the
Vortex).  But I'm a very chord-oriented person, and I'll have to have
more delay time than the Vortex gives me before I can get serious about
that kind of approach.

I don't know whether it qualifies as looping (and don't much care), but
I'm also playing around with canons, both live (using MIDI guitar and
the 12-second delay capability of the Casio VZ-8) and sequenced
(step-entered using the software that came with the computer).

But as far as describing, categorizing, or labelling the music itself
(Precision Pointillism?  Sound Carpets?)-- hey, we musicians are
exempt!  That's a job for critics and other non-musicians! ;-)  But you
can hear a few examples of my primitive efforts for yourself at my Web
site, if you're so inclined.

> personally i'm still struggling with all the abilities of the 'plex and 
>the
> timing of using next loop-so i'm concentrating more on the single loop. 
>it's
> amazing how varied the result can be by taking different approaches 
>(chordal,
> linear, heavy, ethereal, synchronized, chaos). i am constantly just 
>letting
> it go onto tape. (i'm spending all weekend in the california mountains 
>to go
> through them all!)

I hope we get a chance to hear them from your Web site!

John Pollock
mailto:johnpollock@delphi.com
http://people.delphi.com/johnpollock (Troubador Tech)