RE nerds with toys

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

Andy wrote:
"I couldn't find anything in the original article to say that
livelooping can be anything other than building up layers.

If anything, that's the myth that hurts us by turning off potential 
listeners."


I agree with you, Andy, but I think we have to see this article as it 
lies in
a broader context.

I interviewed for well over an hour for this article with and, in that 
interview,
I tried to give props out to all the interesting live loopers in this 
community
who are doing innovative things with looping,  many of which are
not pop oriented singer/songwriter oriented approaches (and some who are).

But the fact of the matter is the Boston Globe is a populist newspaper and
just out of necessity, can't be encyclopedic, scholarly  or even 
thorough about musical
phenomenas.

Additionally,   the paper is going to radically limit the number of 
words that can be printed.
The journalist, Adam Conner-Simons was enthusiastic and thorough in his 
interview but
I knew that much of what I relayed or even artists that I tried to talk 
about or the history
of our movement would not make the final cut.  It's just the nature of 
mainstream print journalism
and even web journalism these days.

But what happens to our movement as a whole as the result of us getting 
coverage, albeit limited,
from magazines like Guitar Player, the Boston Globe,  the O'Reilly 
Digital Media site, etc,
is that it legitimizes our efforts to promote when we are talking with 
regional journalists,
radio DJs and , eventually television producers.

I am keeping a constant , upgraded file with all the live looping 
articles I find in prestigious
and/or popular journals and I send them immediately to the press or even 
to venues or festivals
that I'm trying to book.

They are little 'badges of legitimacy'.

On some levels , for the hard corp and the 'converted'  amongst us,   
this might seem hollow,
but it is not........................it is a very legitimate way to 
popularize what we do so that
we can make our scene grow.

Let's face it,    if a few hundred people who read these articles only 
to receive a cursory
understanding of what's really going on in the trenches of the movement 
and amongst the innovators
go out and buy a Looperlative or Ableton's Live  or a laptop to run 
Mobius, Sooperlooper, August Loop
or whatever,   it will stimulate the engineers and designers of these 
machines and programs to
further innovate and we'll all profit from it.

It will mean that the people putting on looping festivals will, 
eventually be able to get economic sponsors
to actually pay all the people who pay out of their pockets to present 
their amazing music to the world.

I envision some amazing collaborations for upcoming Y2K festivals, but 
currently,  I can't raise enough money
and audiences just don't provide enough door income to manifest some of 
these ideas.

That said and done,   the amount of money I've been able to raise in the 
past few years is vastly more than
three years ago and it would be raising as we speak (if it were not for 
the awful state of the global economy right now)

So, I say,   let  the KT Tunstalls and the Joseph Arthurs and the Imogen 
Heaps of the world get the first mainstream
press about live looping.....................we're still out on the 
crest of the way trying hard to lead the way.

If articles about them increase interest in live looping,   we'll be the 
next wave of artists who will benefit from it all.
It's always been the nature of innovative artists.................very 
few of them make the top of the pops,  but it doesn't
mean that we aren't having a huge influence on that scene because we 
aren't yet mentioned.   We will be.