LA Loop Feste Audio Now Online

[Andre LaFosse <altruist@altruistmusic.com>]

Hello all,

I've uploaded my set from the LA Loop Feste, held in Burbank at the end
of June.  Serious thanks to Tony Moore (the show host and recording 
engineer for the night) for hooking me up with a copy of the set.

Those of you who were curious as to what it sounded like might enjoy 
giving a listen; the material also ties into the recent threads on 
limitations, EDP functions, and (in the case of one of the selections) 
live reverse looping.

These files are NOT being made available through public links on my web
site, so this is basically a Looper's Delight exclusive.  They probably 
won't be up for very long, so if you're curious, now is the time to 
stream/download away.

I'll present the links for files in order of what I thought was most
effective musically.  Since there have been requests for more in-depth 
feature discussions on the list, I'll give a bit of technical info for 
those so inclined.  

The setup was about as basic as I can get: guitar into EDP into amp.  It
was a mono rig recorded with one mic, so these are all mono files.  The
only "effect" was an ebow (which I sort of regret having brought, since
I leaned on it more heavily than I would have liked).

1) IMPROV #3 (aka "Something We Can Dance To")
RealAudio Stream: http://www.altruistmusic.com/ram/62801-3.ram
MP3 Download: http://www.altruistmusic.com/soundfiles/improv3.mp3

This is probably my favorite bit from the set, which was played in
response to Steve Lawson's request to "play something we can dance to." 
(You can actually hear his request, along with my incredulous response, 
at the very beginning of the file if you listen closely.)

This was built mostly from multiply and insert (insertmode=insert) on
the 
EDP, with quantize on, for most of the tune.  I sort of lost the plot
after a few minutes, but I figure it was Steve's idea, so it's all his
fault!  :-{}

2) IMPROV #2
RealAudio Stream: http://www.altruistmusic.com/ram/62801-2.ram
MP3 Download: http://www.altruistmusic.com/soundfiles/improv2.mp3

This is the most technically complicated selection from the show.  I
actually "primed" the EDP before I played anything, by using a quantized
record + insert (insertmode=insert) move to set up a multi-cycle loop
before any audio had been laid down.  You can hear where I started to
insert new quantized cycles in between the "primed" cycles over the 
relatively ambient loop that went down initially.

It starts off a bit on the cliche'd "ambient guitar loop" side, but it 
doesn't stay there for long.  Where it really gets interesting, to me,
is 
a few minutes in, where I switched quantize off and changed the
insertmode 
from insert to replace and started dropping very short fragments into
the 
loop.  The musical effect is sort of like a radio broadcast running into 
static interference. 

One other interesting technical tidbit: the very end of the improv uses
Matthias' "Snake eating its tail" trick of decreasing loop length as
feedback is lowered -- so the more the audio fades out, the shorter the
loop becomes.

3) IMPROV #4
RealAudio Stream: http://www.altruistmusic.com/ram/62801-4.ram
MP3 Download: http://www.altruistmusic.com/soundfiles/improv4.mp3

This one's pretty boring from a technical (and maybe a musical)
standpoint: 
A single guitar line that ends up growing into a massive undulating wash 
of ambient sound.  (Bet you've never heard THAT one out of a looper,
eh?)  
Sorry, Kim.  Kind of pretty anyway, I suppose.  The Matthias "feedback 
snake" bit is here, too.

4) IMPROV #1
RealAudio Stream: http://www.altruistmusic.com/ram/62801-1.ram
MP3 Download: http://www.altruistmusic.com/soundfiles/improv1.mp3

(There are a few brief gaps in the master recording of this track.  The 
recording also didn't kick in until the middle of the first phrase I 
played, so this particular file starts on the second phrase.)

In some ways, this was the most ambitious bit from the set, since it
used a particular looping technique I'm still not entirely comfortable
with.  It's not a total abject failure, I don't think, but it's the tune
I think works least effectively out of the four presented here.

The technique in question involves setting the feedback all the way
down, and using the insert button set to unquantized reverse.  The idea
is to try and reverse each phrase after it's played, and immediately
improvise a counterpoint to it.  I like the concept because nothing ever
repeats exactly the way it was played -- the texture is constantly
evolving, and there isn't any "looping" in the most literal sense of
the concept.

Because of that, though, I find it requires a very different mental
approach on my part than typical looping does -- I have to be thinking 
every second of the way, and I'm still not totally sold on my ability 
with this particular technique.  

My overall assessment of the set as a whole it that it's not bad, 
although I can hear a lot of room for refining and developing some of 
the basic ideas.  I also wound up playing into the ambient guitar cliche 
book a lot more than I would have liked.  

I don't mean that in any sort of offensive manner to those who tend to 
play along the lines of what I did here, but I'm personally trying to 
distance myself from relying on that particular approach by default.  
On the evidence of this show, I still have a long ways to go.  Got to 
start (or re-start, in my case) somewhere, I guess...  Next time I 
think I'll leave the ebow at home.

Anyway, thanks to all for listening, both at the gig and now.  Any 
feedback or comments are of course welcome...

--Andre LaFosse
http://www.altruistmusic.com