Re: Expectations, artifice, and a hell of a can of worms

[philip raath <philraath@yahoo.com>]

been thinking about some of the relevant issues in
this thread in the last couple of days...

this weekend was very important for me because it was
the first time i played out w/ looping gear and
whatnot. stage fright is something that plagued me
most of my life until suddenly it just disappeared
about 3 months ago.

 i was invited to play at a party where a bunch of
people would be jamming and maybe a few people would
show up and listen...a few people turned out to be
about 100! had i previous knowledge that i would be
putting myself on display in front of all these people
i would probably have flipped out, but i was so caught
up in playing that i hardly noticed the number swell,
and once i did notice i was glad they were all there. 

as we know, when yer looping in public you always run
extreme risk of fucking up in front of people, and
that always scared the hell out of me before. but i
had never felt more comfortable playing in front of
people. this was largely to do with the fact that i
really "know my gear" and am comfortable actually
performing upon it, and i suppose there was a
subconcious realization that the fact that i was doing
something different freed me from many audience
expectations.

when we first started playing the other musicians were
quite intriqued by what i was doing, and i'm finding
quickly that fellow musicians are much more interested
in how sounds are being created, and much quicker to
judge the validity of such. 

most were very excited when i showed them the
processing i was using, but i did have one fellow tell
me that i was losing all the soul in my music by
letting all this gear taint it. btw: i was running
through a boss ds1, dd5, a DOD d12 (w/fs300), and a
boss rps-10. i chose to leave the boomerang at home
because i rely on it heavily and wanted the challenge
of interacting with my other gear without the 'rang.

i'll admit i was somewhat put off by the fellow
dissing my use of gear. i understand what he means,
but gear is not neccesarily automated. as we have been
saying, one key to making this exciting is the level
of interaction that many of us have with our gear,
literally performing upon it.

once the crowd showed up, i don't think most were
actually aware that i was playing guitar, or that the
ambient loops were coming from me. there were 2 djs
playing along side and i was in full ambient/noise
mode. but once the djs took a break i played for about
45 minutes on my own w/ more melody and structure and
plenty of people seemed very intrigued by the sounds
and the looping. at least 7-8 people came up to ask
how i was "doing that" and looked over my gear w/
plenty of curiosity. pretty sure most of these people
were not musicians.

i knew i was going to be playing with a bunch of
classic rock guys and went in with the express purpose
of disturbing them. but i was thrilled that most were
really into it, with the one exception. however, when
i unplugged/plugged my guitar back in and looped the
explosive crackle of such, and then proceed to
manipulate this into a very ugly, noisy rythm loop,
they just told me to "stop...now...please...". thought
that was pretty funny, even though i really liked the
loop. 

in summation: i've known for a good while now that i
get extreme satisfaction from interacting with gear as
instruments themselves, and the people who sat close
and watched me do so as they listened to the changes
seem to really enjoy both aspects of the process.

2: musicians are much more critical of process than
non-musician audiences. some want to moralize the
process, and when you put your intellect and heart
into this, it sucks to hear that. 

thanks for reading all this if ya did. it matters to
me that we have this lovely little community of
loopers, and this performance (even if it was just at
a party) was a watershed fer me, and i felt it
deserved sharing here. 

peace,

happy new year, hope yer all blessed,

phil

=====
"Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what
it's like to live inside somebody else's skin.
 It is the knowledge that there can never really be any
peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally 
for you too." 
                                   -Frederick Buechner
"The jewel is in the lotus."

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