Re: Re:Newbie question; the live approach

[Richard Zvonar <zvonar@zvonar.com>]

At 3:22 AM +0000 12/18/01, Chris Olden wrote:
>  I wanted to ask the listers about their approach to  looping in a 
>live setting.

Almost all of the live looping I do is improvisational, and almost 
all of that has been me capturing loops of other people's performance 
or of recorded sources. In the past my main loopers have been 
Eventide H3000 and DSP4000, and TC2290. I now have an Eventide 
Orville, which I programmed as a 4-channel looper but haven't yet 
used in performance. I recently bought two Repeaters and have been 
using them with guitar, but don't have the gall to inflict that on an 
audience.

I sometimes use long loops with regeneration, indulging in the usual 
Frippery, but I'm more inclined to capture short loops of another 
performer's phrases. Once I have something captured I usually mess 
with it in a manner that depends a lot on the properties of the 
looping device. For instance, changing a loop length in an Eventide 
H3000 causes the pitch of the looped material to change to a higher 
or lower pitch depending on whether I've shortened or lengthened the 
loop, whereas changing a repeating sample playback in a TC2290 leaves 
the pitch alone.

Because I'm rarely performing on a conventional instrument, I can 
devote my attention to the looping system in such a way that it IS an 
instrument. Thus I rarely let looped material just "sit" in the 
musical texture. I often "capture and dump" material at a rapid pace, 
or I may capture several simultaneous loops of contrasting materials 
and bring them in and out of the mix.
-- 

______________________________________________________________
Richard Zvonar, PhD
(818) 788-2202
http://www.zvonar.com
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