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RE: Looping Catching on?



>Another option is being proficient on your instrument, for you instrument
>players out there. If you are a badass on that Warr or Stick or Tele or
>French Horn, your loops may not be noticed as much, but John and Jane will
>have something that they can appreciate

I don't want to put words in someone's mouth, but I think this is
antithetical to the point Paul made re DT's view of looping being perceived
as a fad rather than an autonomous field of discipline... I don't think any
of us are (at least intentionally) advocating the use of looping as a
substitute for instrumental competency. Paul's point, to which I added my
comment, dealt more with folks seeing looping as an "effect", as something
added on top of an existing methodology. People see a guitar and half
expect to hear BB King licks. Looping is still unfamiliar to the general
public, so most people can't be expected to distinguish between "input
device as part of a total system" and "instrument as the whole deal."
Hoping that our "loops may not be noticed as much" goes against the grain
of even doing loops in the first place. 
It's like when the first guitar synths came out and the sounds of other,
existing instruments became available to the guitarist. A lot of lousy
sounding stuff was flying around, because people were trying to use
preexisting codified GUITAR techniques to sound like trumpets, flutes
or what-have-you... It wasn't until people (Fripp comes to mind as a good
example) began to approach the guitar synth as a NEW instrument distinct
from the guitar that we began hearing truly musical results. There's
certainly nothing wrong with being a "badass" on an existing instrument,
but  what I had in mind, and I think what Paul was saying as well, is that
to be a "badass" looper might require a shift in mindset, an application of
effort and discipline no less intense than that required for existing
instruments, just DIFFERENT as the specific needs of the particular
situation might warrant.
What'chall think?
Tim