Re: Off-Topicers Delight!

[Tim Nelson <psychle62@yahoo.com>]

I pretty much agree with Kim that the signal-to-noise
has been skewed away from looping as of late, but I'm
not sure I'm convinced that all of the examples of
OT-ness he gave are really that far afield. I mean,
when a listmember asks about midi controllers, mixers
or  rack wiring, it's usually in the context of how to
set up or best use a looping device, whether or not
that is specified. Our loopers don't exist in
isolation. We've got to send signal into them, and
their output has to go somewhere. If we were a fuzzbox
list, I'm sure people would be discussing the relative
merits of different types of guitar pickup; a guitar
pickup is not a fuzzbox, but it is certainly a factor
in the performance of the fuzzbox. I look at a
question about a mixer's aux sends in the same way;
someone probably wants to know more about how to best
route a signal through a setup that is centered around
one or more looping devices. Also, a lot of the
non-looping gear discussion was concerned with pre- or
post-processing a looped signal. That's not, IMO,
*six* degrees of LD, but maybe two or, at most,
three...

I believe the Peter Gabriel thread was sparked by
someone's observation that he includes a JamMan (AS an
instrument) in the list of instruments he used on the
latest album. The "acoustic guitar as drum" topic was,
at least as I understood it, offered in the light of
looking to explain/solve the tone difference between
the original and looped signals when using the
instrument WITH A LOOPER to creat a variety of timbre
and to fill several simultaneous musical roles in live
performance. We've had numerous threads in the past
dealing with pre-electronic cultural equivalents of
looping such as the use of ostinato in Bach, Reich and
the like, the prominence of repetition and cycles in
gnawa and gamelan musics (to name a few); a thread
about the didgeridoo has the potential to be VERY
on-topic, even if we don't specifically mention
looping didgeridoo-ers like Dr. Didg or Tom Heasley,
but talk about techniques for getting a seamless drone
going, which essentially serves a similar musical role
as at least one aspect of looping, but can be done
acoustically.

I do agree with Kim completely about political posts,
though. As interesting as the sentiments expressed may
be (on both sides, in many cases), such posts elicit
reactivity to the extent that topicality is lost
completely. And the bandwidth goes waaay up.

No, I don't think we've run out of legitimate looping
topics at all, but I do think we have to provide a
context. The instruments we play THROUGH loopers, the
different ways we might hook the loopers up, the pros
and cons of techniques we use to record and distribute
the recordings we make of our loop-oriented music, the
reaction of audiences and critics to loop-based music;
that's all relevant, an integral *part* of looping,
not merely "related" to it.

Kim's certainly not off the mark in asking us to try
harder to stay on topic, and we certainly *do* tend to
wander even through legitimate on-topic threads, but
it IS often hard to define the edges of that gray area
where looping stops and OT begins.

-t-

--- Kim Flint <kflint@loopers-delight.com> wrote:
> So what is the problem? 

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