------------------------------
Loopers-Delight-d Digest				Volume 97 : Issue 129

Today's Topics:
  Re: LOOPING PHILOSOPHY (condensed)    [ buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barre ]
  More on audiences, communication and  [ KRosser414@aol.com ]
  Re: LOOPING PHILOSOPHY (condensed)    [ John Pollock <johnpollock@delphi.co ]
  re:Re: Midi standards                 [ SoundFNR@aol.com ]
  Friday Night in San Antonio           [ james rhodes <sharkey@texas.net> ]
  Upgraded echoplex arrivals in Europe  [ Erik Ljones <eriklj@stud.ntnu.no> ]
  a little over "scale"?                [ fred marshall <fred@fredmarshall.co ]
  Looper's Delight takes a technical l  [ Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com> ]
  Loop performance listings             [ Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com> ]

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kflint@annihilist.com

------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 20:20:48 -0400
From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: Re: LOOPING PHILOSOPHY (condensed)
Message-Id: <199708070020.AA06158@world.std.com>

Somewhere in this thread we were asked "isn't what loopers do a lot
like what electronica/DJs do"?  This was intended in a technical
sense--"should they be on this mailing list too?", or more like,
"what name could we assign to this music we do".

Now, it's understandable that we might ask "well, are the two kinds
of music really similar?  Don't they have different philosophical
aims?"

Now, me personally, I think there's a purely technical argument
(no good/bad, no right/wrong, no art/craft/pandering) issue here.

To me, when we're talking about sampling we're talking about an
extended sample, say with audible internal rhythm, which can be
"looped".  This is an attempt at giving a "technical" definition
at where in the continuum of sampling is relevent.  So, when a
DJ samples and "recontextualizes" something by playing it (perhaps
looped), and layered with other sounds, he's doing one thing.
Is this not like what "we" do when we create a loop by layering
multiple passes into it?

I don't think so.  An artist with a "performance instrument"
(say a guitar, or a saxaphone, or a keyboard set to play
sampled strings) has a particular vocabulary available to
him or her, which allows for the playing of one or more notes
of a large range of pitches, which can be combined into larger
pieces of "music" called phrases.  The core vocabulary (the
notes) is like the alphabet--the letters have no meaning
without adjacent letters to form words.

We can also talk about the larger vocabulary--what phrases
and chords our chosen performance-instrument-artist might use.
Clearly, artists work with the same core vocabulary (the same
12 notes--well, most of the time), but different large-scale
vocabularies.

On the other hand, a recontextualizing artist using samples
of the type I described is unlikely to want to play those
samples at different pitches, since the tempo would change.
Even if he did, that sample would internally modulate, but
would still create the same phrase.

What I'm focussing here is an issue of granularity--a traditional
performance instrument has more granularity, and hence a
versatility of musical phrase selection.  The large-scale
sample performance has a more limited selection of phrases
(namely, whatever samples are available), but those phrases
are widely varying in all sorts of ways a single performance
instrument can't achieve.  (e.g., variability of timbre,
but that doesn't really cover things like vocal samples...)

Let me use a totally frivolous thought experiment.  Suppose
I start a mailing list, called phrase-loopers-delight.  Me
and many other people on the internet are creating this odd
sort of music which we, for lack of a better term, call
"phrase looping".  The idea is to take snippets of music,
say the riff from Black Dog, and play them into a looping
device.  You can layer on more and more phrase riffs.

Perhaps there might be some talented artist who could
create really listenable, interesting, and exciting music
by creating performances that just loop phrases taken
from Led Zeppelin guitar riffs.  (I doubt it, but suppose.)
Then, I don't think it really matters whether those riffs
are put into the looper by playing them on a guitar, or
sampling the phrases from the records.  Sure, it will change
the sound in various ways, but it seems to me the "compositional"
challenge in such music is in figuring out what phrase to
perform when, not the execution of the individual notes.

My point being, in that case, yes, I don't think there's
really any difference between the two, in the sense of
categorizing what sort of music it is, or in the sense of
whether they should all be on the same mailing list.  Yes,
both the guitar-players-of-Led Zeppelin-riffs and the
samplers-of-Led Zeppelin-riffs have a lot in common.

However, I don't think that's really very much like most
looping music, and I really don't think that's anything
like electronica and traditional DJ sampling (although,
hey, I could be wrong).

The exciting thing about "traditional" looping as opposed
to this presumably fictional "phrase looping" is that once
you've got this loop going, you're free to play "any" phrase
(or single note) you can think of.  While I'm sure a DJ
could use a "big 3" looper to do useful electronica, and
thus might be interested in our mailing list to share
technological know-how, and hence one might be tempted to
say "where are the electronica people, they could use
these instruments", it also seems straightforward to see
that the kind of music (and I don't mean rock vs. jazz
vs. new age vs. electronica) you get one way comes out
radically different from the other way, because of the
musical phrase limitations of one.

Of course, I could be totally wrong.

I'm tempted to try to refer to one group as doing
"layered looping" (DJs) and the other as doing "looped layering"
(loopers), but I'm not sure that really makes any sense.

Sean Barrett

------------------------------
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 03:40:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: KRosser414@aol.com
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: More on audiences, communication and craft
Message-ID: <970807034048_448235495@emout15.mail.aol.com>

>If it's sufficiently far from people's
>conditioning, then they may be impressed, moved or stretched, but they
>will also probably experience confusion and possibly annoyance ("where's
>the conceptual pigeonhole for that? how do I know if it's good or bad?")

The degree to which you should be concerned with this is the degree to which
communicating to an audience is important to you.  If it is, your challenge
is to find a way to bridge that gap.  Pat Metheny & Bill Frisell have found
ways to sell some records presenting some very unusual and
pigeonhole-challenging music, to cite an immediate example off the top of my
head.  Steve Reich might be another.  I could go on talking about this quite
a bit, but I fear I'm drifting way off topic...

>Unfortunately, people's conditioning and cultural referents seem pretty
>narrow these days, and the reasons (and prescriptions) for that would be
>another rant in and of itself.

The cure for this is not to dismiss them as forever unreachable!  If, as
artists, we don't take on the challenge of educating or widening the
experience of the public, who will?  

>- I perceive several varieties of craft:
>1. Basic craft on an instrument or voice, which is usually necessary in
>order to create most music that even relates to the traditions we've
>been accultured to.

Do I interpret this to mean accumulating the vocabulary of established
traditions?  If so, I'd take exception to this being 'basic', as I think it's
still possible to create earth-shattering works of art within established
traditions if one is sincerely up to the challenge, and as such can be far
deeper than just 'basic' if one so chooses.

>2. Craft in service of art, which is when you practice in order to pull
>something off that you really want to pull off.
>3. Developmental craft - basic practice in order to increase your
>general skill level, in the hopes that new skills will become part of
>your vocabulary and enable you to do cooler things

Not sure I'm getting the exact distiction between these two.  Plus, I'm a bit
suspicious of techniques or skills 'becoming' the vocabulary (if I'm reading
you right), at least as a listener.  I think technical practice is important
to the degree that it removes a layer of self-consciousness that you have
between yourself and your instrument when you're trying to play.  This is at
least an approach I try to impress upon my own students.  If a technical
exercise is not working toward that aim, I'd seriously question if it's
necessary.

>4. Obsessive, competitive craft - the kind fostered by most guitar
>magazines. play faster, better, cleaner, like Steve Vai, like Eddie Van
>Halen, like Jim Hall, like Django Reinhardt, like Robert Fripp. Impress
>the other guitar players on your block. This is the evil extreme version
>of craft. 

'Evil extreme'?  Woah, lets keep this in perspective - I'd possibly call
genocidal maniacs or child molesters an 'evil extreme' and I'd love if it
turned out the worst thing they did was sound just like Jim Hall:-)

Seriously, this last point certainly works in tandem with the eastern/Toaist
ideas you've mentioned elsewhere (and which I'm very fond of myself on many
levels), but I think a pretty strong case can be made for the many incredible
works of art produced by western culture under the guidance of obsession and
competition.  Maybe it means we don't exactly groove as one with the
universe, but it's given us some great obsessive, competetive artists like
Picasso, Dali, James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, Orson Welles, Charlie
Parker,Schoenberg, Liszt, John Lennon, Jaco Pastorius, etc.  Things would be
just a little too quiet around here without guys like this popping up every
now and then...

...for my taste, anyway,
Ken R

------------------------------
Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 06:27:16 -0500
From: John Pollock <johnpollock@delphi.com>
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: Re: LOOPING PHILOSOPHY (condensed)
Message-id: <33E9B114.6F2@delphi.com>
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

Dave Stagner wrote, in part:

> Recontextualization isn't limited to sampling.  Hell, I've been
> recontextualizing a Zeppelin tune myself lately... my solo acoustic
> version of "No Quarter" (DADGAD tuning).  If I can find a good,
> reliable percussionist, I want to form a band doing nothing but
> acoustic covers of rock tunes.  That's a whole band concept formed
> around recontextualization, without a hint of electronics.  And

Timbuk 3's acoustic "Born to be Wild" is devastatingly powerful; the
words "heavy metal," in this context, might jolt some folks.
 
> recontextualization isn't just "musical"... it can work on entirely
> different levels.

I hated Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man."  Lyle Lovett's version
totally transformed the song.  Wynette's version came across, to me, as
a spineless, none too bright woman urging other women to stand by their
men, even if they're treated badly.  Lovett's implored _a_ woman to
stand by him (even if he treated her badly).  Worlds of difference!

> I like playing "I Touch Myself" by the Divinyls.
> Songs about masturbation take on a whole new meaning when sung by a
> man rather than a woman!  (The next step... making it a medley with
> Joan Osborne's "Right Hand Man".  Think about it).

I began my career as a singer doing exactly this.  In the early 1980s I
played pedal steel guitar in a country and western band which played
exclusively in gay bars.  I liked to sing, but was seldom given the
opportunity; the other band members preferred my steel guitar playing to
my singing, (not without justification).  For my rare singing
opportunities, I carefully chose songs originally sung by women, and
sang them without changing pronoun genders.  I was rewarded by strong,
positive audience response and a demand for more. 

> Recontextualization plays with the audience's
> expectations, takes advantage of their preconceived notions.

Hrm... I'm not sure this is necessarily true.  My own test for
successful recontextualization is, is the result valid art even if the
audience is unfamiliar with the original context?

For a possibly familiar example (in the same vein), consider Melissa
Etheridge's version of "Maggie Mae" (?sp). IMO, this is a great piece of
music, even if you've never heard the Rod Stewart original.  The gender
reversal, and the astonishing similarity of their voices, are flavorful
icing and sprinkles on what's already a very tasty cake.

One of my "successes" in gay bars was the song "Someday Soon," recorded
originally (I think) by Judy Collins in about 1967.  When I was singing
it, fifteen years later, many of the people in the audience had never
heard it, though they might well have inferred it was originally sung by
a female.

"My parents do not like him, for he rides the rodeo," says the song;
"My father says that he will leave me crying..."

Sung by a female, these words portray rather normal parents.  Sung by a
male, they suggest parents who accept their son's sexual orientation,
but are fearful of the consequences of his choice of partners-- a home
life, in other words, very different from those experienced by most
members of my audience in 1982.

Straying even farther off-topic:  Recently, through no fault of my own
(blame Douglas Hofstadter for writing _Godel, Escher, Bach_; it's been
said before on this list, but this is required reading for any loopist),
I began experimenting with the creation of tiled (looped?) graphics and
"canonic" MIDI music, using identical or very similar transformation
processes in both disciplines.  My ultimate goal is the creation of a
Web site presenting the graphics and music together.  This project is
still in infancy, but a couple of very primitive early examples of the
graphics are at
http://www.hotwired.com/members/profile/troubtech/ if you're interested.

If I had a digital camera or scanner, I'd probably have used my own
images as source material for the graphics from the beginning.  Lacking
both, however, I'm using readily available material-- from the
alt.binaries.* Usenet groups.  Capriciously, I've chosen to limit myself
thus far to images of human bodies.

So-- I'm a self-confessed recontextualizer, shamelessly using "samples"
of other people's work as source material for my own.

So-- Why am I still very uncomfortable with using samples of other
people's music in my own?  Why do I so intensely dislike most of the
sample-intensive music I've heard (admittedly very little)?

Part of it, I'm sure, is Sturgeon's Law ("Ninety per cent of everything
is crap").

((Ob (condensed):  Warhol's soup can had me screaming, "Fraud!")  

Part of it, I'm sure, is what Sean T Barrett aptly termed "an issue of
granularity."

In the graphics I've done so far, I'm confident that no human eye could
recognize the source material without having it displayed beside my
transformation of it-- and likely not even then; the "sample" is too
small, and too completely transformed.  The level of granularity of the
sample seems to me to be equivalent to  a word of text or a note of
music-- probably not a legal copyright infringement, and certainly not a
moral one AFAIC.  A section of an image large enough to be recognizable
despite my transformations would bother me, though-- as would a phrase
of text or music, if it were the basis of the entire work.  A quote, on
the other hand, could legitimately be fairly extensive, if it didn't
dwarf the recontextualizer's efforts. 

But I even quit using my drum machine, in part because it uses other
people's sounds.  Probably the level of granularity of a sampled drum
hit would be that of a pixel or a letter of the alphabet; there's no
sensible reason for me not to use it.  I simply decided that I wanted to
be responsible for creating every sound my audience hears, and to do so
before its eyes and ears (not even any prerecorded samples of my own
sounds).

Does that make me a bad person? :-)

John Pollock
mailto:johnpollock@delphi.com
http://people.delphi.com/johnpollock (Troubador Tech)

------------------------------
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 13:54:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: SoundFNR@aol.com
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: re:Re: Midi standards
Message-ID: <970807135318_-354962730@emout07.mail.aol.com>

But I can plug a cheap midi keyboard into my jamMan and access all
the functions. I'm HAPPY.
                                              Andy (UK)

------------------------------
Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 14:21:43
From: james rhodes <sharkey@texas.net>
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: Friday Night in San Antonio
Message-Id: <3.0.2.16.19970807142143.2ed726fc@texas.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

hi looping folks,

will be performing duet with an outstanding flamenco guitarist Scott
Harris, at The Green Onion Lounge 1033 Ave. B 78215 (210) 224-4334.
we will be performing mostly my non looping originals,,,however there will
be enough looping for the looper's fix.  we will be playing from
10:30pm-12:00am , and as usual i will be playing Stick(R) ,,,

and thanks to list member/ plex owner Randy Jones for coming out to my last
gig,,,much appreciated,,,thanks again for supporting independent music...
and taking the time to read this shameless plug..

peace
james rhodes

------------------------------
Date: Fri, 08 Aug 1997 21:47:40 +0200
From: Erik Ljones <eriklj@stud.ntnu.no>
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: Upgraded echoplex arrivals in Europe (and more...)
Message-Id: <2.2.32.19970808194740.006dd6ec@pop.stud.ntnu.no>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

The people at Gibson just told me it may be another 3 weeks before the new
upgraded Echoplexes reach Europe. I ordered mine 7 weeks ago, and I'm having
problems killing off the waiting time. My Ensoniq Dp2 3.6 sec delay/looper
and Boss pedals (2 sec) just don't do it for me anymore, I guess. This
actually might make me go mad, you know. Any suggestions as for how to make
my life seem meaningful playing the guitar the next 3 weeks?
Oh, and by the way! How come nobody ever mentions the music of Robert
Hampson/ MAIN on this list? You'd think the guitar freaks on this list would
be obsessed by some of his recordings, like the "Firmament 3" record (not
"hz", I hate that one).Wether or not you like the music of Main (Hampson),
he truly is able to make interesting sounds come out of his guitars- The
same thing goes for former Spacemen3 guitarist Sonic Boom. 
-Just wondering-
Erik (NOrway) 

------------------------------
Date: Fri, 08 Aug 1997 16:13:18 -0800
From: fred marshall <fred@fredmarshall.com>
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: a little over "scale"?
Message-ID: <33EBB61A.3042@fredmarshall.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

- yo !

- (if he works 10 hrs a day) Bill Gates takes home 10 million dollars an
hour

-that's a hundred million a day, or a billion every ten days or 8
billion every quarter. 

- nobody's that good, except maybe

 - Marshall Arts - appearing at the Paradise Lounge tonight - 9:30 pm to
close . . .

- see you there?

mmmmmmm

------------------------------
Date: Sat, 9 Aug 1997 15:45:38 -0700
From: Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com>
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: Looper's Delight takes a technical leap forward!
Message-Id: <v03102800b012a04b4632@[207.171.196.35]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

As always, Looper's Delight lives by volunteers. Thanks to these folks, we
have yet more good stuff on the web. If you think you would like to help
out too, let me know! The latest contributions:


It's so exciting! Thanks to Chris Chovit, Looper's Delight now has a search
engine for the mailing list archives! Now you can effortlessly find arcane
details about weird old delays among the zillions of posts ever made to the
mailing list. A cgi script! Damn, before you know it we might even have
java on there! Thanks Chris, I guess this means I need to update the
archives with the last couple months worth of looptalk. Link to the search
page and search away here:

http://www.annihilist.com/loop/archive/archive.html



And thanks to Bob Sellon, we now have the schematic for the Delta Labs
Echotron on line. Fascinating! thanks, Bob! Satisfy your need to geek out
on hardware here:

http://www.annihilist.com/loop/tools/deltalabs/deltalabs.html



And Michael Peters just sent me another version of the ever-growing
profiles page, which should be up sometime this weekend. If any of you html
hackers out there want to save Michael from his own generosity, he could
really use some sort of form that automatically creates html for new
profile entries. Contact him if you have ideas: Michael Peters
<MPeters@compuserve.com>.


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, 10 Aug 1997 00:23:03 -0700
From: Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com>
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: Loop performance listings
Message-Id: <v03102802b01316e2233c@[207.171.196.207]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Ok loopers-

I've just added a new section to the web site for finding listings of
upcoming Looping performances. The page is located here:

http://www.annihilist.com/loop/gigs/performances.html

Basically it's a self-operated deal. The page has a link to the Musi-cal
musical event database, which maintains worldwide listings of musical
performances. The webmaster of Musi-Cal kindly added a category just for
us, "looping." So when someone clicks on the link at Looper's Delight, it
does a search at Musi-Cal for any performances with the "looping" category.
If you want your performances to appear on such a search, all you have to
do is go to the Musi-Cal site and enter it in their database:

http://www.calendar.com/concerts

There are also links on the performances page to the area on Musi-cal where
you enter your performance info. So get on over there and enter your
performances in the database! It'll only work if you use it!

[the musi-cal webmaster was a little unconvinced that "looping" actually
qualified as a proper category of performance rather than a sort of
technique, and I'm not sure that I disagree with that point of view. I
certainly wasn't very convincing, but neither of us sees any harm in
describing performances that way. I guess it will become meaningful if we
use it. So go nuts!]

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

--------------------------------