Re: delay -> looper || player -> loopist -> musician

["K. Douglas Baldwin" <dbaldwin@suffolk.lib.ny.us>]

As always, Matthias, I enjoy your posts immensely. Some comments on this
most recent thread:

>>> Some of the last posts about t.c. and such leave the impression that 
>any
>>> delay is a looper as long as it has enough delay time (and is 
>stereo?!).
>>> But a delay unit just repeats all the time!
>
>>> ---> what turns a delay into a loop unit?
>
>As you say it nicely, Dr. Knox:
>> ... making it an "instrument" rather than an "effect"


I believe that "making it an instrument" is  more internal than external.
For me, the question is "at what length does a delay become an instrument?"
and my answer would be, "around two seconds". I've never worked with delays
longer than the twenty-some seconds of the Headrush, except for an old tape
Echoplex which could do sound-on-sound recording over the entire length of
the tape - about two minutes as I recall. I had that unit back in the late
70's, and I couldn't quite focus enough to make that happen, but I'd like 
to
try again sometime. So with "more than two seconds" and "less than two
minutes" I feel I'm looping.
    BTW, who is Dr. Knox???

>I created only textures for about a year. Then, when rhythm came into the
>loops, it was a great revelation! Texture is nice, but groove is a natural
>consequence!

I wonder if this is an organic, predictable consequence of looping. I
started adding rhythmic pulses early in my "serious" looping experiments
just because it seemed the way to go. I had never heard anyone else doing
guitar-based rhythmic loop music prior to that. It just felt right.

>
>Fun in my personal history is that I had almost no sense for rhythm until 
>I
>was about 25. Without a clear drummer, I was lost. Then during the first
>trip to Brasil, I started dancing (no way to escape!) and soon afterwards
>the loop story started and when it turned rhythmic, it gave me
>simultaneously:
>- conscience about my irregularity in timing and
>- a tool to hide this lack or even turn it into something original.
>
>In parallel I learned to make love nicely and yell less at people ;-)
>
>Yes, we are not just making sounds, we heal ourselves first and then
others:
>If the first benefit of the loops are textures that change state of mind,
>the second may be the feeding back of time perception.
>Maybe both sum up in some syncing of internal functions, harmonization.

Perhaps the old "music school" breakdown of music into melody, harmony and
rhythm applies here.

>> don't you need MIDI in there somewhere as well?

And the next big challenge we as loopers may care to face is our
*collective* sense of rhythm. Can two loopers jam and keep the groove,
hearing each others' loop length and altering phrasing to match? *Without
the MIDI umbilical cord?*

>The very last step probably is to do it without loops at all. ;-)


BINGO! Like the Sufi musician, whose name escapes me, who stopped "playing"
music when he saw that music was all around him. He wrote the book which 
has
been discussed here before... "Mysticism in Sound and Music"?

>ps: this may be boring for some people, since it was discussed on the list
>in the past, but I am happy it comes up in a different light, and maybe we
>get a clearer idea each time about looping...

And it sure beats discussing string gauge :-)
Douglas Baldwin, Alpha male Coyote, the Trickster
dbaldwin@suffolk.lib.ny.us