Re: looping and how it is overrated :-)

["matt davignon" <mattdavignon@hotmail.com>]

I have caught a fair amount of (friendly) flak from local looping 
musicians 
for my views on the overratedness of "looping" as a genre.

To me, loops are tools. A loop is something you do to a sound. They fall 
into the same section in my musical mind as echoes and reverb - even 
though 
they're a heck of a lot more useful. Whenever I hear "the looping scene" 
mentioned, I start thinking of what the local reverb scene and 
pitch-shifting scene must be like.

Would all forms of music using gratuitous repetition of recorded sounds be 
"looping" music? Does that include every single electronic dance artist?

I agree with your statement (Legion), the presence of loops does not 
inherently make something good. In fact, in many cases, overdependence on 
loops can make music worse than it would be otherwise. After all, we're 
talking about repetition here, and for musicians who aren't careful to 
keep 
a good amount of variation going the output gets to be about as 
interesting 
as the 67th verse of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall".

Lastly, I think a lot of music critics, venue bookers, and music fans feel 
that, now that techno (based on repetition) has been the most popular 
genre 
of music for the last 10 years, hailing a genre of music on the basis of 
repetition is more than a bit out of touch. While I understand where us 
guys 
and gals are coming from (and I actually prefer loops in music over the 
absence of them), I also understand that the use of the phrase "looping 
music" to describe your genre to somebody you're trying to impress (like a 
concert promoter) may be shooting yourself in the foot.

When I describe my music, I often use the phrase "real-time sampling". For 
those to whom it applies, I think the phase "tape-looped music" may also 
be 
interesting. And for you guys who do the 4/4 electronic dance music, you 
have a list of hundreds of different sub-genre names at your disposal. ... 
Just don't use "experimental". That's ours. :-)

Matt

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