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

[Matthias Grob <matthias@grob.org>]

Douglas Baldwin:
>I believe that "making it an instrument" is  more internal than external.

Rather a question of atitude than loop time, you mean? I guess so...

>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.

I like Kims view of *interaction* a lot. But speaking of time, probably the
number of repetitions is important, too: a quick fading half second delay
is an effect, but a constantely repeating half second loop is a base to
play to, so I would consider it looping.

>    BTW, who is Dr. Knox???

"b.knox" <b.knox@latrobe.edu.au> started this thread. Since he did not
mention his first name, I gave him a title (very common here in Bahia). I
remember there was a comic person, an inventor or so with that name... ;-)

>>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.

I did not think of it as a consequence of looping so much, but of sound,
maybe even creation. When I play to guided meditation and speeches, I
interprete the first time after the big bang (which is to loud to play ;-)
as a long bass note that becomes more complex and eventually starts to
oscilate and acelerate into a pulsing that represents work and history...
that could be another thread about "musical archetypes"...

>>> 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?*

so far I dont see it without umbilical cord, since no unit is flexible in
adapting to rhythm variations, so we have to accept the delay time as base
and connect the machines to agree on it. But once you do this, its great to
loop together! (there are some samples on my site, with David Hoppkins,
Bira Reis,

>>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"?

Yes, I thought of him, too: Hazrat Inayat Kahn. The book I read was simply
called "music" and a music history specialist recently mentioned that he
considers it the most advanced book about music so far.

then again, I did no mean it so serious: lets loop while we like it!




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