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Re: a new kind of meeting
At 10:22 AM -0800 2/28/02, Matthias Grob wrote:
>But have you heard of a meeting of users of a new technology or style?
>Did the saxophone players meet in the 40ies to show the whide
>application of it to each other? Or the sythesizer players in the
>60/70ies?
>Or have you heard that musicians of some style met in a bigger
>number in a organized way to exchange their music and tricks?
Perhaps there is more of this than you realize. I have attended
conferences of microtonal instrument builders and composers of
multichannel surround sound music. I have participated in festivals
of extended vocal techniques and interactive computer music. The
computer music and electroacoustic music community worldwide has many
organizations and conferences devoted to various aspects of these
musics.
>So I am wondering more and more what the "thing" in looping is.
>Maybe its about improvising. Looping definitally gives a new dimension to
>it.
For years I have used the term electroacoustic improvisation to
describe what I do in performance. I don't really think of myself as
a "looper" per se, although I have used looping techniques as an
important part of my musical process. The central matter for me is
the use of electronic processing as a musical instrument. When my
friends and I started doing this in the mid-1970s we were using the
available technology of the day: tape delays and synthesizers and
simple effects boxes. Over the years we've adopted newer technologies
as they have come available. I'd say this is true of all of us, with
each jumping in at particular moment in the evolution of the
technologies and styles, and each having a personal "take" on the
possibilities afforded.
My personal "take" has been influenced by Marshall McLuhan's idea of
media as extensions of the human body and nervous system = instrument
as musical prosthesis. I've also been influenced by Norbert Wiener,
the father of Cybernetics, and by various researches into music
cognition.
One (perhaps obvious) thing to consider is that loop music is a
technological manifestation of principals of pattern, imitation, and
hierarchy in polyphonic music (canon, fugue, call and response,
isorhythm, colatomic structure, etc.). Another thing is the role of
memory in improvisation (our loop and delay devices serving both as
mnemonic aids and as "sidemen").
>Gary Hall got me from the air port and said more or less:
>"Its an approach to composition based on interaction between the
>musician and the processing."
A succinct way of saying the same thing.
--
______________________________________________________________
Richard Zvonar, PhD
(818) 788-2202
http://www.zvonar.com
http://RZCybernetics.com
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