Re: Boulder, CO folks (loop content too)

[buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)]

>Because my band and my equipment have limitations, I'm
>not doing a whole lot of looping in our shows.  A general 
>question for everyone is....
>
>If your collaborators are not improv based and you're working
>with "standard" song structures, how do you integrate loops?
>
>Intros and Finales are the most natural places, but I'm interested
>in blurring the lines.

This is in no way an answer, but I've always enjoyed
playing along to CDs and "adding" rhythm and semi-lead
guitar parts to them.  So recently I've been exploring
trying to use my Jamman to do this.  A lot of assumptions
I would have made about it not working don't seem to
be true:

 -  the music can be relatively dense already
 -  the music doesn't have to stick to a single key

Now, the latter one is an iffy proposition.  Since I'm
trying to make really sustained looping textures, those
textures _do_ need to fit throughout.  So an atonal speed
metal monstrosity is not going to cut it.  But I've found
that a lot of songs may use, say, a I/IV/V and a major II
or a major VI or some such in their main chord progression
(if they modulate or whatever, that's something different
entirely).  One obvious approach in this case would be to
restrict yourself to notes that come from all of the keys
needed to play all of the chords (e.g. the notes in common
between C and D to cover C,D,F,G,A).

But, I've found I can get away with picking a single key
which is "compatible" with the song, and limiting myself
to notes from that key (and rarely an accidental or two);
the song itself has an "awkward" harmonic structure implying
that key yet deviating it, and the textural loop sustaining
that key does not end up seeming too dissonant (well, if
done right).

I haven't really described what I _do_, but there's no
real science to that.  I've used loop lengths with no
time relation, loops that are 4 beats or 2 beats long
in a 4/4 song, loops that are 5 or 3 beats for a 4/4 song
which shift around out of phase in pleasing ways, etc.

Sometimes I turn the mix knob so the performed notes
are much louder than the loop, and in the context of
a dense song, the loop becomes effectively inaudible.
This often makes for an interesting effect when the
song ends, and I stop playing, and whatever I've been
playing recently has built into a loop I couldn't hear
(and wasn't consciously thinking about).  Of course,
it sometimes sounds like crap, but it's still a pleasant
surprise to suddenly hear this thing and realize it
was always there... and you can turn it down quickly
enough--it just ends up being an oddball outtro.

Anyway, I'd say that for me it's an interesting
experience and good practice (especially because
I'm not actively playing with anyone in the first
place); whether it would be for anyone else, I
cannot say.  My current play-over CD: "King" by Belly.

PS: Oh, as to "intros and finales"--a related thing
happens to me playing over "Seal My Fate"...
It starts very sparse--clean guitar, spare drums,
simple major key, nice to put a loop over.  Then
it's pretty busy, but 2/3 through or so they drop
down to the spare arrangement as a little "climax"
(hmm, anti-climax? it makes the return to the chorus
very "big")--so I get a nice moment when it drops
back down and the loop becomes very prominent, but
has changed drastically from how it sounded at the
start.

Sean Barrett
(in my younger days when I had no looper I used
 to solo over Let the Power Fall, so this is a
 nice reversal)