RE: ORGANIC programming and looping

["max valentino" <ekstasis1@hotmail.com>]

Ok gang (o' mine)...I am back from semi-lurker mode (it's beena busy and 
hectic summer; I have been reading the posts but have not had the time nor 
energy to chime in....until now..)

Of late there have been some VERY interesting threads on a number of 
subjects (methinks Rick may have stumbled into a sort of philosophical 
epiphany for which he is eager for all of us to indulge in/with)...and 
this 
latest thread on organic looping is most interestinga nd inspiring.

I try to keep all my looping as organic as I can; that is the main concept 
in my performance.  All the sounds I make are generated by the bass guitar 
and I use very little (in fact just a touch of reverb, if any) processing 
and electronic augmentation to achieve this.  I have found ways to use the 
bass and my hands to create effects similar to the electronic effects of 
flanging,phasing, chorus-ing even ring modulating...I guess that keeps 
things pretty organic (creating delay effects are tricky, but not all that 
difficult using loops and playing to them in "alterered rhythms").

I also try to keep the loopage and the playing interactive.  That is to 
say, 
i try to smear the lines of distinctioin between what is being played and 
what is being looped. This helps to avoid the pitfall of create a 
mindlessly 
static repetitious event while maintaining a level of repetition and , in 
fact, generating a level of "play" within that repetition.  This achieved 
thru various levels of undo, replace, mute and fades (in and out) of the 
looped material (BTW: I am still using only me trusty ol' JamMan with 
upgraded OS chip by Bob Sellon, which allows for a number of new functions 
to this old beast).

One trick I have been playing with quite is bit is a method of manual 
randomization.  For instance, in the course of a perfromed piece, either 
"composed" or improvised, I might play a motif, and eventually loop all or 
part of it and in real time begin playing a harmony line to it.  Rather 
than 
simply "overdub" this new material to the loop, I will tap the record 
button 
(I am using two Digitech FS300 footswitches rather than any MIDI control 
the 
JamBoy) multiiple times in a rhythmic cadence to the looped material. 
This, 
in essence, turns the record/overdub function on and off rapidly in time 
with the music, and produces a somewhat randomized "print" of the melody I 
have been playing.  If the melody is fast, I might tap  in half time, on 
downbeats or off beats; if the melody is slow I might tap in double time 
or 
in a triplet rhythm (often varying the "engage/disengage" beat of the tap 
so 
the triplets "roll" in a more randomized fashion). Thanks to Rick's 
influence, I have lately been using this techique by tapping the 
record/pause fuction in a cascara rhythm and varying styles of 
claves....often mixing these rhythmic taps in the course of creating an 
"overdub".  And, quite often when doing this, I ignore the loop start/end 
and let this "randomizing" bleed over mulitple layers of the loop. And 
often, in pre-meditation of using this technique, I will conceptualize the 
overdubed melody to be two or three times longer than the original 
loop...or 
some times 2.5 times longer.

The idea here is not to just to toss in sounds pell mell and make an audio 
"splatter", but rather to have some concept(and control) of how to 
quasi-randomly extract various notes from a played melody, as it is being 
played, to create a new melodic motif, harmonic focus, and rhythmic 
concept 
to a looped performance.

I originally began doing this with the JamMan in an effort to create some 
of 
the organized glitchines which Andre LaFosse so excels at, but found this 
technique works very well in injecting some abstraction into a more 
"ordered" compostion (and doing this in multi-layers of overdub sometimes 
reaveals the most beautiful "accidental" melodies and sounds.)

Ok, so there's no special software pgms, no high-dollar extaneous 
out-board 
electronic mojo....just a rather simple technique using practical 
knowledge 
of looping, rhythm, and musical composition in a most organic way....
Max