Catching up and staying in the loop

I'll split this post into a couple of sections: catching up on news and a little bit about my latest musical obsession. Neither of the topics is that lengthy, so it makes sense to combine them.

Catching up

On the review side, I've posted the new things I want to write about. Los Amigos Invisibles is the only CD that I didn't write up. I decided not to write that one because it's mostly a '70s pop/disco thing, which is not very interesting to me. On the other hand I do have a couple of new things coming in: Sonic Youth and VNV Nation. A friend recommended the VNV Nation, so that should be interesting. Another friend recommended Chris Joss, so I'll look into that too. Finally, I'll be writing up the story of my recent copyright conflict once it's resolved.

As far as playing goes, I'm still on my own. The reggae band did not pan out. We never got together. Also, they were talking about 12 hours of rehearsal a week spread over 4 nights, which isn't workable. So, I've got several solo shows coming up and I'm still in the market for a band. The solo gigs are fun, but it's not quite the same. In fact, I need to keep it all a little more interesting...

Staying in the loop

...which leads nicely into our next topic. I've been evolving in my use of the Boomerang phrase sampler. This is a cool toy that lets me record what I'm playing, then it repetitively plays that recording in a loop. I can overdub and add parts if I want to. Additionally, I can record a second looped section and shift back and forth between them. This comes in handy for recording verse and chorus pieces. This lets me have a one man band sound in my live performances. In my initial work, I would simply record the verse and chorus while I played and sang. Then, I could take a lead over the two whenever I wanted. Nice, but fairly trivial.

The next level is taking the bass and layering that onto the recorded loop. This involves laying down the initial loop with guitar, switching to the bass, and then overdubbing the bass line. After that, I can switch back to guitar and add parts or just play along while I sing. Sometimes, I even tap on the guitar body to get a percussion part. Most of these songs are one guitar and one bass part, but I do have a couple where I layer on a number of additional guitar parts. My cover of Drive by Incubus is a good example. I lay down the initial changes, then add bass. Then I layer in another two or three textural guitar parts to build a funkier sound. By the time I'm done assembling all of this, it's thicker and has a fuller groove.

Lately, I've started working on this to assemble more jam oriented parts, where I might start with guitar or bass, then I build up. The difference here is that I have a looser idea of where the piece is going to go. I'm almost ready to bring out my drum machine to fill out the rhythm section and turn this into a real band arrangement.

There are musicians out there like Keller Williams, Arthur Lee Land, and Zoe Keating who take this to a much higher level (with better equipment than me, too;-). They help me see some of the potential of what I can create. The key, though, is to remember that this is supposed to be fun for the audience. So, I can't let myself turn into a loop-obsessed shoe gazer, where the technical challenge overwhelms the entertainment aspect. Those artists keep it very interesting, but I have seen boring loopers, too.

Unless I find a band soon, I anticipate getting a lot better at this.