------------------------------
Loopers-Delight-d Digest				Volume 97 : Issue 122

Today's Topics:
  RE: Vortex database (at last)         [ Michael Peters <MPeters@compuserve. ]
  Re: Ambient?                          [ Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com> ]
  Re: not so Ambient                    [ Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com> ]
  Re: not so Ambient                    [ illoyd@intrlink.com (Ian///Shakespa ]
  Re: No mail for me?                   [ BlkSwan03@aol.com ]
  LOOPING PHILOSOPHY (Part 1)           [ The Man Himself <altruist@shoko.cal ]
  LOOPING PHILOSOPHY (Part 2)           [ The Man Himself <altruist@shoko.cal ]

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Kim Flint
kflint@annihilist.com

------------------------------
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 04:05:32 -0400
From: Michael Peters <MPeters@compuserve.com>
To: "'Looper's Delight'" <Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com>
Subject: RE: Vortex database (at last)
Message-ID: <199708030405_MC2-1C43-3438@compuserve.com>
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Disposition: inline

Andy Butler  (UK) says,

>Vortex patch exchange, now up and running (I hope), 

Congrats and thanks bunches for setting this up! I'm looking forward to all
the new sounds ...
___________
Michael Peters   
        http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mpeters
HOP - Fractals in Motion ..."the only screen saver you'll ever want"
        http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mpeters/hop.htm
Support the Warr Guitar Defense Fund
        http://home.earthlink.net/~greendog/warrfund.html

------------------------------
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 04:53:27 -0700
From: Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com>
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: Re: Ambient?
Message-Id: <v03102805b009efeada40@[207.171.196.215]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 10:11 PM -0700 7/27/97, The Man Himself wrote:
>Two cents on the ongoing "tyranny of ambient" thread...
>
>People have wondered why so many assumptions tend to be made about
>"loop-based" music being equated with "ambient" music, and why there seem
>to be so many Big Three-wielding guitar players on this list.  I know
>that Kim has expressed a desire to lure some people from the
>DJ/Electronica side of things into the list discussions, which as far as
>I know have unfortunately gone largely unrealized (unless there are some
>techno heads lurking out there).

As Ian noted, there are a few electronica sorts floating about. There are
also a number of folks from other non-ambient genres, like bluegrass, world
beat, rock, jazz, etc.  But I do hunger for greater diversity on the list,
that is true. I think that Looping is practiced by a much more diverse
group than we have here so far, and I'd like to see the list open up a bit.

I don't think this problem is due to some inherent aspect of realtime (or
non-realtime) looping that makes it more ambient or guitar friendly. It's
really more like bad advertising. I haven't exactly been bouncing all over
cyberspace trumpeting Looper's Delight to every odd musical genre I stumble
across! The list started by me sending mail out to announce its existence
to a bunch of people I knew, who undoubtedly reflected my tastes to some
extent, and from there it mostly spread by word of mouth. So we end up with
a large majority of gear-head guitarists with weird musical tastes. :-)

The folks who stumble on Looper's Delight through web searches or whatever
oftentimes come from different backgrounds, and bring some interesting and
refreshing viewpoints. More and more people seem to be appearing here from
those directions. I think that's great; it helps us all see things in new
ways, and hopefully broadens our own music.

I'd like to see the list continue to grow in that way. Please help out if
you can, I think it will do us all good. If you know any interesting
loopers out there, or interesting people interested in looping, tell them
about the list!

I also think that Looping is something that can be useful and enjoyable to
musicians from all backgrounds. The more experimental folks have gotten
into it early, but there is no need to keep it a secret from everyone else!
I think the Looper's Delight list holds some great potential for improving
this. By discussing Looping every day, we are helping to define and develop
it into something more clear and accessible. This makes it easier and
easier for others to understand Looping and desire to join us or just enjoy
the music we create. It also makes it easier for us to show others what we
have discovered and get them to start looping too.


>There are a few things to consider here.  For one thing, we generally
>refer to what we're doing as "loop-based musi,c" given that most of us use
>some sort of real-time looping based around a delay unit or a Big Three
>item.  However, most DJs or techno artists aren't going to think of what
>they do as "loop-based" -- they're going to use one of the dozens of
>sub-genre monikers already floating around the atmosphere of that scene.

I think the word "loop" is pretty darn common in that scene so it's really
not that big of a stretch. Using real-time loopers is just starting to
catch on amongst the DJ set, as evidenced by the now commonplace simple
loopers and phrase samplers found on DJ mixers. Again it's a case of bad
marketing. The companies who sold many of the more sophisticated looping
devices did not understand this market or how to sell to it. They
understood the traditional guitar market, so that's where it went. How do
you explain the Invisibl Skratch Picklz to executives of Gibson Guitar? I'm
still trying to figure that out, and I'm sure Jon Durant had similar
experiences at Lexicon.

A lot of people involved in electronica, hip-hop, dj-ing, etc have never
even heard of looping devices like the echoplex, jamman, or boomerang. It's
such a great match, too, so it's kind of amazing. Instead, companies like
pioneer, gemini, and akai have begun developing simple loopers for the dj
market on their own. They seem to be doing quite well with it. Maybe some
of the people using those will get turned on by it and find some of the
more sophisticated devices out there on their own. Or maybe the guitar
companies will notice that rock is dead or on sabbatical or whatever, and
try to get a little of the electronica action. Or maybe things will cross
over in some other way. We'll see I suppose.

But I think it's wrong to draw some sort of line between one set of loop
tools and the other. "Big Three" doesn't make sense, because there are more
than three loopers out there! The feature sets vary, but the basic looping
idea shows up in many places. From simple delay pedals, to dj-loopers, to
echoplexes and jammans and boomerangs, to older guys like the
ElectroHarmoix 16 second and digitech timemachine delays, to the vortex, to
the akai remix16, to pro cd players with settable loop points, to
eventides, to tc 2290's....it's all over the place. One particular set of
features shouldn't be more pc than another. And really, sharing the ideas
and applications from different devices and genres can only help us all.

Even trying to draw lines between realtime and non-realtime looping seems
wrong. If you make a recording (or performance) by doing the loops in
realtime or by painstakingly cutting and pasting, what is the difference to
the listener? Different techniques and processes for creating similar
results. Why try to keep them all separate?


>Look at it this way -- a metal guitar player isn't going to describe his
>music as "amplified guitar-based music," he's going to call it metal.  A
>blues musician will call his music blues, rather than "folk-derived
>African-American guitar music."  Likewise, a techno artist won't call his
>music "loop-based," because the loop aspect goes without saying (just as
>the guitaristic aspect in the aforementioned examples does).  Besides,
>which *sounds* better: "timeshifted, sample-based cut-and-paste music" or
>"jungle"?  So a forum for "loop-based music" might well seem a strange
>place for a musician for whom looping is an almost unconscious and
>pre-ordained means of making music.

And they arrive here to find we're all babbling about guitars and get bored
and leave....:-)

Good points,though, but I'm not sure I agree with your premise. Defining
Looping as a genre unto itself seems odd to me, although many of you are
clearly trying to do that. That's fine. But much of what we talk about is
looping as a technique, or a process, or an instrument. The process of
looping in music is probably just as intesting to a drum n' bass musician
as it is to an ambient musician. In that respect it is like discussing
composition, or improvisation. The same ideas are applicable in vastly
different genres.

Discussing looping as an instrument is like discussing say, percussion.
Have you ever noticed that percussionists who play totally different kinds
of music talk to each other like brothers/sisters? It's like they are all
part of the same club. Guitar players for some reason spend a lot of time
talking about why their brand of it is better than the other guy's, which
is pretty lame. I'd rather see loopers following the
percussionist/brotherhood model!



>There's also a fundamental difference between the way that most of us are
>using the idea of looping, versus how most sample-based "music with
>looping" is made.  Basically, with most electronic loop-based music,
>you're dealing with someone sampling *somebody else's* music, which was
>*already made*, and then editing the sample in step-time via a computer.

You're not one of those people that gets all bent about sampling are you?
:-)  What difference is it really if the sample is recorded on a hard disk
or recorded on your brain? The loop is a sample of something. If its a
sample of you playing, chances are the thing you played is heavily
influenced in some way by "somebody else's music"!  I mean, I've spent just
about all of my musical life intentionally not learning any piece of music,
in the hopes that my own music would be more unique. Well, it doesn't quite
work. The things I've listened to are definitely there. But that's fine!
Using something familiar gives music a starting point.

A lot of electronica involves recontextualizing something familiar. So does
a lot of other kinds of looping. I think it is a stretch to say there is
some fundamental difference between creating a loop based on some funky
riff I play or some funky riff I sample off a p-funk album. The musical
purpose would be the same in either case. And what happens when I sample
something off p-funk and add my playing to it? Am I some kind of
mixed-breed, shunned by all?


>Most of this list seems more based around the "classical loop" approach,

Just because its gone that way so far doesn't mean that's all it has to be!


>which traces its roots back to reel-to-reel tape loop systems, which as
>far as performance applications are concerned basically involves creating
>(or, to use an old-fashioned term, *playing*) the music at the same moment
>that it's being looped, and doing any editing or re-compiling in real
>time.  It's a very different approach, which may explain why a lot of
>elecronica artists might not feel like they have a lot in common with us.

It seems rather biased to decide that this is the "classical" approach to
looping, as opposed to analog arpeggiators or turntable manipulations or
tape-and-razors or whatever. They were all developing in roughly the same
period. And much of that was just the application of new techniques and
devices to ideas that have existed in music for a long time. Different
people took different approaches. But why do you feel so compelled to draw
divisions between them and "us" whoever we are? It would seem more useful
to communicate with whoever "them" is and discover the ways in which we are
really doing the same thing.

And I haven't noticed that electronica artists don't feel they have much in
common with "us". In fact, many of us seem to be them, and many of us are
actively exploring one side or the other. Many of the more noteworthy
artists of your "classical aproach" seem to be collaborating with
electronica artists, with promising results. And I seem to get along fine
with the electornica folks I meet. Maybe they just don't like you,
Andre....:-)

Again, any lacking in the LD genre-demographics probably has a lot more to
do with a lower profile in some net communities than in others. When more
electronica artists know we exist, more will show up. It also has something
to do with the demographics of the internet. Male, 20-50, educated, middle
class income....sounds like every other place on the net. The kids in my
neighborhood probably aren't even finishing high school, let alone buying
computers and surfing the web. But some of them are probably creating
music, probably with loops, with whatever gear they can get, maybe even one
of the "big three". Just because they are not here, doesn't mean they're
not one of us!

kim

______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                   | Looper's Delight
kflint@annihilist.com       | http://www.annihilist.com/loop/loop.html
http://www.annihilist.com/  | Loopers-Delight-request@annihilist.com

------------------------------
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 05:30:36 -0700
From: Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com>
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: Re: not so Ambient
Message-Id: <v03102806b00a225ab76b@[207.171.196.215]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 7:43 AM -0400 7/28/97, Ian///Shakespace wrote:
>hmm, well, lurking no more... hi i'm Ian, 24, and i'm a looper.

Hi Ian, welcome to Looper's Anonymous!

sorry  ;-)


>do mostly solo "electronica" (ranging from ambient soundscape stuff to
>laswell-inspired dub to "jungle") that also relies on many kinds of loops.

>hmm.. my main studio loopers for electronic stuff are a boss DD-3 pedal and
>a Digitech 4-second "time machine". and with the use of a constant beat,
>i've found it quite easy not only to lock up the delays to the tempo of a
>given track, but utilising fx sends and levels and quick cuts, to build
>intense rhythmic loops within the delay.

I'd like to hear more about what you are doing here and how you do it. I've
been experimenting in a rather limited fashion with putting sequence
pattern stuff into synced loops and delays and mucking about with
crossfading and feedback and such. Things like reversing the loop or
looping only piece of the sequence and crossfading back and forth with the
original got me some interesting results. Certainly made the lame drum
machine patterns a lot more interesting! I'd like to do more of this, what
are some techniques you use?

kim

______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                   | Looper's Delight
kflint@annihilist.com       | http://www.annihilist.com/loop/loop.html
http://www.annihilist.com/  | Loopers-Delight-request@annihilist.com

------------------------------
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 12:32:43 -0400
From: illoyd@intrlink.com (Ian///Shakespace)
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: Re: not so Ambient
Message-Id: <v02140b00b00a5c2bfe92@[206.156.204.49]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Hi Ian, welcome to Looper's Anonymous!
>sorry  ;-)
no no, glad someone caught that... :-)

>been experimenting in a rather limited fashion with putting sequence
>pattern stuff into synced loops and delays and mucking about with
>crossfading and feedback and such.
too many possibilites, eh? yeah this is something i need to get more into,
but the limited capabilitise of my mixer make it prohibitve at this point.
oh, for the want of a 1604...

>Things like reversing the loop or
Ah, one thing i wish i had in real time (but i love my ESi for it... more
on this in a sec.)

> Certainly made the lame drum
>machine patterns a lot more interesting!
the syncopation you can get from delays is really great, unlike anything
you would ever think to program in the first place. I'll do this to figure
out what i'd like the drum sequence to sound like sometimes...

>I'd like to do more of this, what
>are some techniques you use?
OKay well i feel like the perfesser or something. Um, i'll deal with the
glorious 800ms DD3 since its my main tool. of course this is all pretty
easily extrapolated to other delays....

I've got the delay on the aux send of my mixer, with the outs (the DD3 has
dry and effect outs) returned on channels. Running the drum machine through
(feedback minimised) i'll find a suitable delay setting. Usually,
everything is running from MIDI clocked from my Mac. Anyway, sequnce
playing. pull everything out of the delay line and get a clean path, then
crank the feedback. using the aux faders on the individual instruments'
channels, add little things to the delay line. Since the delay is
complementary to the drums, everything should be kosher. Keep a finger on
the feedback control, just in case something gets out of hand. Should I get
something really grooving, the DD3 has a "hold" function where it'll
infinitely loop whatever is in memory. I guess made for guitarists to solo
over a 800ms rhythm guitar chord... whatever, i'll dump the loop into the
ESi and keep it running there, clear out the delay line and keep building.

I dunno, its just a feel thing, i guess. mainly dropping stuff in from the
auxes and keeping what works. lots of time with headphones on....

um, more will come to me certainly, but i'd love to hear about some of your
particular techniques...


Ian///Shakespace
www.intrlink.com/~illoyd

------------------------------
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 16:21:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: BlkSwan03@aol.com
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: Re: No mail for me?
Message-ID: <970803162121_1424077889@emout06.mail.aol.com>

I think everyone went on vacation simultaneously.  I've been getting a bit,
but not much.
Maybe the subjects have not been enticing enough.  Who has an enticing
subject?
Has anyone done any amazing pieces using nothing but cardboard boxes?  I
mean, I haven't, but it's a thought!  I'm into corrugated.   Run it thru
effects and stand back!

Jim    Portland OR

------------------------------
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 17:40:11 -0700 (PDT)
From: The Man Himself <altruist@shoko.calarts.edu>
To: loopers-delight@annihilist.com
Subject: LOOPING PHILOSOPHY (Part 1)
Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.3.91.970803173516.16189A-100000@shoko.calarts.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Kim --

Your reply to my "ambient" post was so thought provoking that I can't 
help but send out some very extensive replies.  I'm breaking this down 
into multiple posts to avoid excessive duress.  And let me make it clear 
that *none* of this is intended as a flame to you or anyone else; I 
humbly think these are some of the most improtant questions to have 
cropped up on the list in a long time.  

Those intimidated by long posts had best delete now.  Otherwise, brace 
yourselves...!
--------------

On Sun, 3 Aug 1997, Kim Flint wrote:

> But I think it's wrong to draw some sort of line between one set of loop
> tools and the other. "Big Three" doesn't make sense, because there are more
> than three loopers out there! The feature sets vary, but the basic looping
> idea shows up in many places. From simple delay pedals, to dj-loopers, to
> echoplexes and jammans and boomerangs, to older guys like the
> ElectroHarmoix 16 second and digitech timemachine delays, to the vortex, to
> the akai remix16, to pro cd players with settable loop points, to
> eventides, to tc 2290's....it's all over the place. 

I don't remember where the "Big Three" phrase came from (it might even 
have been coined by yours truly), but I use it as a way of referring to 
the Echoplex, JamMan, and Boomerang.  And I absolutely feel that these 
units are in a seperate class than the other units you mentioned above 
(not to say that all of the other units are in the same category, of 
course).  I don't mean to imply some sort of elitist stance with the use 
of the phrase, and I'm certainly not saying that using one of the Big 
Three makes a person any more of an artist than using a different sort of 
unit.  

But they *are* distinguished by an unprecedented level of what can be 
done to a looped signal.  Take one of the Boss digital delay/loop pedals 
and put it up against a Boomerang -- they're on completely different 
levels of sophistication entirely.  Same thing if you compare, say, an EH 
16-second with an Oberheim Echoplex.  And again, let me reiterate, I'm 
*not* saying that using a Big Three is more musically valid than using a 
less cutting-edge piece of technology.  But to shy away from putting the 
Big Three in a class by themselves is ignoring the basic aspects of their 
nature.  For crying out loud, Kim, you helped invent one of them -- I 
can't believe I'm trying to argue *in favor* of this!  8-/

> One particular set of
> features shouldn't be more pc than another. And really, sharing the ideas
> and applications from different devices and genres can only help us all.

See above -- I really don't think this is an issue of political 
correctness.  What is done with a tool is far more important than what 
the basic tool is.  Let me put it in non-looping terms: If you put a 
Sears guitar up aainst a Klein, you're going to have a hard time 
convincing me that there aren't some serious differenes between the two, 
and that they're in different classes.  But give me a choice between 
listening to C.C. DeVille play a Klein or David Torn play a Sears, and 
I'll take the latter eleven times out of ten.  (No offense to any Poison 
fans out there, of course.)

As I mentioned earlier, I'm sort of looking forward to doing my August
residency at Lumpy Gravy without my Oberheim, since it'll force me to dig
deeper into my Vortex and guitar synth rigs to really see what I can get
out of them (of course, I'm still gonna be highly relieved when the Plex
comes home from Oakland!).  These tools may not be Big Three members, but
if used in a musical manner, with a deep understanding of their
capabilities, there's no reason why they can't make music every bit as
expressive as any other.  I want to reiterate this point, since I really
don't feel that my position on this is indicative of a politically
incorrect stance. 

Stay tunes for Part 2,

--Andre

------------------------------
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 17:51:40 -0700 (PDT)
From: The Man Himself <altruist@shoko.calarts.edu>
To: loopers-delight@annihilist.com
Subject: LOOPING PHILOSOPHY (Part 2)
Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.3.91.970803175051.16189C-100000@shoko.calarts.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

The saga continues...!

On Sun, 3 Aug 1997, Kim Flint wrote:

> Even trying to draw lines between realtime and non-realtime looping seems
> wrong. If you make a recording (or performance) by doing the loops in
> realtime or by painstakingly cutting and pasting, what is the difference to
> the listener? Different techniques and processes for creating similar
> results. Why try to keep them all separate?

Well, this paragraph has enough food for discussion to merit an entire 
mailing list of its own.  I'll scratch the surface...

First of all, I vehemently disagree with the assumption that realtime and
non-realtime processes necessarily produce similar-sounding results.  A
live loop-based performance, undertaken with a strong grasp of the
fundamental techniques available, has a sound and a potential performance
arc that will only be realizable in step-time through a tremendous amount
of editing, if at all.  Likewise, if you do a step-time composition that
requires extensive amounts of cutting and pasting (non to mention
treatments, such as timestretching, which are presently more or less
impossible as real-time processes), then you're making music in a way that
inherently cannot be done live and on-the-fly.  There are simply certain
musical nuances in each area that are impossible in the other. 

As for the remark that it won't make much difference to the listener, 
that in itself is a whole can of worms.  First of all, while I certainly 
don't think that the receptiveness of the audience should be written off, 
I also feel quite strongly that a large part of the craft of any art has 
to be pursued for the love of and devotion to the craft itself -- and 
whether or not somebody in the audience happens to pick up on it or not 
is sort of irrelevant.  

It's possible to read your question as, "Since most people won't be able
to tell a big difference, then what difference does it make?"  One might
as well say, "Most people won't be able to follow the changes to 'Giant
Steps,' so why bother playing them in a solo?"  Or, "95% of the listening
audience for this record is never gonna notice a detail like how much
reverb is being applied to the backing vocal track, so why worry about
it?"  Or, "Only someone who's a painter is going to notice this kind of
brush-stroke, so why bother trying to employ it?"  Or, "Only a filmmaker
will be able to appreciate this tricky camera work, so why bother shooting
it?" 

In each question, the answer is basically the same: These are the details
of our art.  This is *what we do*.  I don't know who first spoke that 
famous line, "God is in the details," but when it comes to this sort of 
thing I'm inclined to agree.  

One last note on real-time versus step-time.  My own use of looping
generally revolves around improvisation; I've found it to be one of the
most consistently inspiring tools for improvisation I've ever used.  As
far as I'm concerned, true improvisation is strictly a real-time
phenomenon.  If you're compiling something in step-time, then you're
composing.  Nothing wrong with that at all.  But improv, at least as I see
it, is largely about composing spontaneously, right then and there.  Even
if you're taking snatches of improvised material and then
recontextualizing them, you're still not really improvising anymore. 

I also hold the live aspect as one of the aforementioned details of how I 
approach this element of my art.  This gets into issues of philosophy, 
probably, but for me a part of the creative statement I'm making with 
this method is that it *is* done live, and it *is* done on the fly.  
Whatever sounds that are being heard didn't exist until they were played 
right then and there.  A lot of people might not notice (I've had some 
people come up to me in the midst of a MIDI-less solo performance and 
congratulate me on programming a great synth patch; I take it as a great 
compliment).  A lot of people might not care.  It doesn't really matter 
to me that much; it's about the way I approach the art.  

One of the reasons I still hold Robert Fripp in high regard as a loopist
is that he's just about the only person I can think of who's consistently
gone out in public and done live, improvisational, real-time looping. 
Yes, I realize he didn't invent this approach.  But he's done it
consistently, and he's done it in a number of very musical ways.  

> But much of what we talk about is
> looping as a technique, or a process, or an instrument. The process of
> looping in music is probably just as intesting to a drum n' bass musician
> as it is to an ambient musician. In that respect it is like discussing
> composition, or improvisation. The same ideas are applicable in vastly
> different genres.

I agree (see, we had to meet up at some point!), although I think the end
results of this shared technique can be vastly different.  Ambient and
jungle, for example, seem to me to be about as different as you can get. 
Ambient's general modus operandi generally seems to be about being
soothing, atmospheric music, which can just as easily be ignored as it can
be focused on.  On the other hand, the most characteristic thing about
jungle I've noticed is that it makes people twitch like crazy.  (Ever
watched people hear drum n' bass for the first time?  It's a trip).  So I 
honestly don't know how much a typical Ambient artist would have in 
common with a typical Jungle artist.  Think about this, though: A 
straight-ahead, solid-body-wielding bebop guitarist has an awful lot in 
common with a shred-machine-armed rock musician.  They're both playing 
the same basic instrument.  But we all know how many examples there are 
in each camp of people who wouldn't want anything to do with the other!

> Discussing looping as an instrument is like discussing say, percussion.
> Have you ever noticed that percussionists who play totally different kinds
> of music talk to each other like brothers/sisters? It's like they are all
> part of the same club. Guitar players for some reason spend a lot of time
> talking about why their brand of it is better than the other guy's, which
> is pretty lame. I'd rather see loopers following the
> percussionist/brotherhood model!

I agree again.  See above...

...and stay tuned for part three!

--Andre

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