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RE: Live Looping Strategy



I am best known as a blues musician (working in a non-looping trio), but my weekly solo gigs allow me room to play and sing blues standards and originals, any of which can be extended into a guitar jam on the EDP.  This is all fun, but exploring both jazz and ambient areas really lends creativity to the gigs and I enjoy morphing back and forth between spacious soundscapes or rhythmic trances and more traditional blues/r&b fare.

 

One of my favorite things to do is to pretend the scene in front of my eyes is a film and that I’m composing the score for it on the spot.  Glancing around the room offers so many different facets of human experience—a couple arguing, one party secretly watching another, smiles that are widening from regard into romance, a lonesome stare into the ever-present television, wait staff plying in a variety of moods—that offer motifs to be interpreted into the Echoplex.  It’s especially nice when a long piece that has evolved through several movements and textures draws a question from a listener:  “What was the name of that last thing you played?  It was like a symphony.”

 

Out of this, some things do get repeated on different gigs and become a sort of vernacular for a while, but then become lost later.  I had one piece that evolved around the Christmas holidays several years ago that even presented my mind with a title:  ‘There Used To Be Bells.’  One of my regular listeners got quite attached to it and requested it regularly, but in her absence it has been forgotten.  I attempted to recall it this past winter—but no luck.

 

dave

 

micdave@hiwaay.net

 

 


From: E Gross [mailto:slapbandjam@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2008 12:00 PM
To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject: Live Looping Strategy

 

Hi Loopers,

 

I am new to looping and LD, have learned much in the past couple of months. I have checked out lots of your available music, which sounds awesome. My question to those that perform live is, is each performance you do completely spontaneous? Or do you start out with a framework for how you want to build a song. For example, for those who have a CD out, do you try to repeat songs which are on your CD?

 

I realize there are probably many different answers based on artistic preference, I have been using what I call the tabula rasa method, in which I start playing whatever comes to mind and take it from there. However the lack of pre-planning leaves open the possibility of falling flat on my face in a live setting (right now only my dog hears what I am playing and she is a very good listener but biased).

 

Many thanks in advance for your responses.

 

E