Re: density

[Matthias Grob <matilists@atarde.com.br>]

On 1 Feb 2008, at 20:05, Bob Amstadt wrote:

>> most original music grows out of playing. So the question "what  
>> music would I like to perform?" is useful but usually limiting to  
>> what we  heard before or to the sounds and playing techniques we  
>> are used to.
>>
>> For me looping was much more a way to discover what comes out of   
>> myself than a tool to "construct" what I had imagined.
>
> I can agree with this.  I do use looping to construct new music.  I  
> just don't see looping as a style of music.  Even starting with the  
> idea that you are going to loop and construct music from the loops,  
> you still have freedom to create a wide variety of styles of music.   
> I guess I'm just trying to encourage him to look beyond looping.   
> Looping is wonderful but it doesn't need to define your music.

I fully agree! I also was amazed how many different traditional styles  
can be enriched with looping plus how many new "styles" or ways to  
build music on loops grew inside and outside of this family. When I  
visited t.c. electronics arround 1990 to encourage them to build  
Record and Multiply into the 2290, they said it was not interesting  
because just a few esoterics like me would use it. I did not have good  
arguments against that because really, the little known looping  
sounded either minimal or ambient. Although I felt that much more was  
possible, I had no idea that within a few years, composers like  
Michael Stiefel, Amy X, Matthias Loibner and many others would create  
such elaborated arrangements totally based on live looping.

But lately, I observed that the limited possibilities of the small  
sample organized loopers created a wave of "sawtooth looping" which is  
the standard form of layering something like bass, riff, perc, bg  
melody and then solo and then cut off.

I prepare myself to make another effort to try to show the world that  
its about evolving and about doing it together - what I had created  
the EDP functions for...