[NewMusic] Bay tape loop improv shows

[Alicia Byer]

I don't know if it's an interesting problem to solve so much as just 
that people need a kick in the pants to keep them from coming to the 
conclusion that having an ebow automatically = going "eee" and building 
up textures atmospherically for 20 minutes. We could be a little tougher 
on each other.

The looper festival sounds sort of neat in that 'very santa cruz' way 
but not really musically progressive although I wasn't there so maybe 
the couple of creative acts made up for all the rest.. or maybe I'm 
being too judgmental.

I'm just feeling lately like.. maybe you're with me here Sarah... it's 
so easy to do everything in music with technology now that it's sort of 
our /responsibility/ to stop putting up with crap... lest there is a 
'new music' loop in the next garage band.

alicia

kristin miltner wrote:
> my 2 cents: I actually enjoy trying to curate around a technique or
> device, because while it limits the materials used, it does not limit
> anyone conceptually. so (hopefully) you'd get 7 or 8 different
> treatments of the same device or method, producing a wide variety of
> music. You get a theme, or a common thread, without the rigidity of
> deciding that your theme is a certain type of music.
>
> But that's only if the technique or device produces a wide range of
> concepts. it's better with more general categories like 'strings' or
> 'animal sounds' but if you narrow it down to 'double bass pedal
> festival' or 'ebow' or 'ableton live' you get a lot of the same music
> over and over. It's an interesting problem to try to solve.
>
> k
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 8:57 PM, Sarah - 21 Grand <21grand at 21grand.org> wrote:
>   
>> Okay, I'll say a thing or two about it, as well. It strikes me as a weird,
>> almost silly concept for a festival ... Maybe back in the 70s/80s when it
>> was more novel, and the technology was relatively novel, I wouldn't be
>> stifling giggles of embarrassment at the name. I'd be dishonest to say the
>> giggles are totally unrelated to words that rhyme with "loop."
>>
>> I mean, it just strikes me as similar to a theoretical "double bass pedal
>> festival" or "double paradiddle festival" or "circular breathing festival"
>> ... I don't mean to denigrate the participants or any good music that comes
>> out of it, but to focus on technique and/or technology that isn't totally
>> new or rare just doesn't seem to be a compelling organizing principle to me.
>>
>> There's a point where things are novel and thus prompts a "gee whiz" factor
>> or a coming together of "fringe elements," but most things eventually
>> trickle down to the general populace and lose those factors, and then, in
>> terms of organizing and "raisons d'etre" it's sometimes time to move on.
>>
>> In the earlier part of this decade, I used to curate a series of
>> performances involving music and projected media. At the time, it was
>> relatively uncommon, but after everyone and their puppy got laptops, dvd
>> players, digital editing software, and cheap projectors, it became all too
>> common, and I became less interested in showcasing it on that basis.
>>
>> I guess I've just been thinking a lot about related issues in terms of my
>> own work, as well as in the arts community as a whole. When is it time to
>> call it done and move on? When one's niche is no longer one's niche, what do
>> you do, or rather, what do you do differently in terms of
>> identifying/classifying/categorizing what you do to others?  This applies to
>> organizations, events, as well as artists.
>>
>> Honestly, this isn't meant just to take a jab at the "looping festival," but
>> to use it as a way of raising questions about general issues of purpose.
>>
>> sl
>>
>> Matt d wrote:
>> Well, I'll say a thing or two about it. I enjoy participating in this
>> festival each year (that is the y2k8 looping festival in santa cruz
>> this weekend.) It's a completely different set of "creative music"
>> than what we have up here in the bay area. The festival theme is
>> "looping", which simply means all the artists use DL-4's or some other
>> box that records and feeds back their live instrumental sounds in the
>> form of loops.
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bay Area New Music Discussion Group
>> NewMusic at music.mills.edu
>> http://music.mills.edu/mailman/listinfo/newmusic
>>
>>     
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