Members LCK Posted December 31, 2011 Members Share Posted December 31, 2011 This one's from a while back -- 1991 -- when I was playing out with a couple of guys. It's from a rehearsal, not an actual gig. I mention this because the recording starts with me rehearsing a joke I planned to make at the gig that night. "Anybody in the audience come from a functional family?" The laugh comes from my bass player. That night, it got a slightly bigger laugh. I'm posting this b/c Rhino complained in another thread that I only write sad love songs in the style of the Great American Songbook. Well, here's an angry folk-rock song... A Town in Idaho Just off the Interstate there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted December 31, 2011 Moderators Share Posted December 31, 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F1h6_2r0xAThe CBG was built by Jon Pruett. He runs sleepinggiantguitars.com. The pickup was made in Austria by Klangbox. You are officially my new hero. That Is Awesome! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members neanderpaul Posted December 31, 2011 Members Share Posted December 31, 2011 Suweet! I do the same thing A Capella, spoken word, country, pop, etc etc. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted December 31, 2011 Moderators Share Posted December 31, 2011 Suweet! I do the same thing A Capella, spoken word, country, pop, etc etc. Thanks! I saw Jon Brion's show at LA's Largo club. He did something very similar with looping. Of course he had a full compliment of vintage instruments, etc. I was mesmerized by his show. Check it out on youtube if you can. So tell me... ...how do you do that? I don't know a thing about live looping. What looper are you using? Is there a click? How do you set the in and out points? How do the subsequent tracks loop at the same point? I'm not asking much am I? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 31, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 31, 2011 There are all kinds of dedicated looping tools these days with all sorts of convenience features. I don't want to come off like an old guy -- but, wait, I am an old guy -- but when I started around 1990, all I had was a 7.6 second digital delay (Digitech Time Machine) and its only convenience feature -- its only feature, actually -- was a loop lock switch where you could 'freeze' the echo to keep it from adding new parts or deteriorating/decaying from continual round trips. Actually, I guess you could say the continuously variable period control was a feature, since, unlike many later echo devices you could twist it and go from super long loop to super short -- for that classic Echoplex lever-swipe dub effect. Before that, my experience with live loopers was seeing a violinist on a street corner in Berkley ~1989 using a live echo loop; in '86 I hung out with a French Canadian busker in Amsterdam while he was working on a home-made echo loop that he wanted to use with his flute -- I never heard him get more than a few seconds out of it, though. And then, before that, my introduction was, of course, the truly seminal No Pussyfooting album by Robert Fripp with Eno and the echo controls. A few years later, in 1980, I saw Fripp do a performance/lecture at the old Tower Records on Sunset in LA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bee3 Posted December 31, 2011 Members Share Posted December 31, 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F1h6_2r0xA The CBG was built by Jon Pruett. He runs sleepinggiantguitars.com. The pickup was made in Austria by Klangbox. Show off. HOLY COW THAT WAS KILLER!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members oldgitplayer Posted December 31, 2011 Members Share Posted December 31, 2011 This one's from a while back -- 1991 -- when I was playing out with a couple of guys. It's from a rehearsal, not an actual gig. I mention this because the recording starts with me rehearsing a joke I planned to make at the gig that night. "Anybody in the audience come from a functional family?"The laugh comes from my bass player. That night, it got a slightly bigger laugh.I'm posting this b/c Rhino complained in another thread that I only write sad love songs in the style of the Great American Songbook. Well, here's an angry folk-rock song... It was 20 years ago today.......... Interesting to hear you sing another genre of song. Listening to all your recent works with dim7 and b5ths etc, I sometimes hear you hesitate or falter a little in you vocal delivery with some of what I consider to be difficult vocal melody lines to match with the chord structures. With this folk-rock piece with its straight-forward chords, you sing the melody with confidence and certainty, and I wonder if perhaps you are writing far more musically challenging works today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members neanderpaul Posted December 31, 2011 Members Share Posted December 31, 2011 I saw Jon Brion's show at LA's Largo club. He did something very similar with looping. Of course he had a full compliment of vintage instruments, etc. I was mesmerized by his show. Check it out on youtube if you can. So tell me... ...how do you do that? I don't know a thing about live looping. What looper are you using? Is there a click? How do you set the in and out points? How do the subsequent tracks loop at the same point? I'm not asking much am I? NO way! I love to talk about looping. It's my thing! It really is simple. It really is involved too. I make about 60-70 decisions per full instrumentation song. I'm usually multitasking. There is a click available. I don't use it. I graduated a few years ago from using a click. When I graduated from that I would play drums first. That is the easiest way to keep it tight. Then I graduated to doing the drums second, third or even fourth. In my mind a click or other automated beat is what sets apart the legit looping artists. That and making natural feeling songs. One of my favorite compliments I ever got was after a 3 hour show at the Taubman museum of art here in Roanoke Virgina. An employee had been around the side of the building from the patio where I was playing. I was breaking down my set and he said "y'all sounded good tonight!" He tripped when I said it was just me, and then became very complimentary. It's this simple. Remember the one. Take this Andy Griffith theme song video for instance. It's A Capella. The first note I sing is not the beginning of the loop. It could be I guess but feeling natural is what makes it work easily for me. The fourth note I sing is the one. I hit the loop record button there. You can hear it click. When the loop comes around I sing those 3 beginning notes again and hit the same loop button a second time. I actually double click it to loop and overdub. It starts the loop seamlessly (if done right.) Hit the button again and you are overdubbing as long as you like. Hit it again and it stops overdubbing. Hit it again and it overdubs and so on. The right button stops the loop. I use mainly the digitech jam man. I also have an older boss loop station. It is the same set up. A sturdy 2 switch pedal. Here is a pic of one. Oh and my vintage gear is limited to my beloved Wurlitzer 200, Peavey T-40 bass, and Peavey T-60 guitar. They are all about '79 models. 8) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members neanderpaul Posted December 31, 2011 Members Share Posted December 31, 2011 Show off. HOLY COW THAT WAS KILLER!!!! !!! Thanks man!! I have to admit am a born show off. I mean to be an artist/entertainer of any kind you really have to want to share your work! Seriously thanks for the compliment. It feels great to be appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members neanderpaul Posted December 31, 2011 Members Share Posted December 31, 2011 Lee, I checked out Jon Brion. He's a very talented musician. Thanks for the heads up! I rarely hear of a looping artist that's new to me. I've been looping now for about 10 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bee3 Posted December 31, 2011 Members Share Posted December 31, 2011 Love this song... they're looping it up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cf3Hhj9JLc[video=youtube;9Cf3Hhj9JLc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cf3Hhj9JLc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LCK Posted December 31, 2011 Members Share Posted December 31, 2011 It was 20 years ago today..........Interesting to hear you sing another genre of song. Listening to all your recent works with dim7 and b5ths etc, I sometimes hear you hesitate or falter a little in you vocal delivery with some of what I consider to be difficult vocal melody lines to match with the chord structures.With this folk-rock piece with its straight-forward chords, you sing the melody with confidence and certainty, and I wonder if perhaps you are writing far more musically challenging works today. You may be right. Or it just may be that my vocal chops have deteriorated in recent years. Some of the bad habits I used to be able to get away with? Not so much anymore. LCK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted January 1, 2012 Author Members Share Posted January 1, 2012 Here's one of the spin-offs from my live loop act, Frippenstein (later Tranz Azul)... http://rothmeyer-frippenstein.bandcamp.com/album/2693 This was a sort of looper 'super-group.' Michael Rothmeyer had been doing a guitar-oriented live echo loop act and I'd been doing keyboard-synth oriented echo looping, but neither of us was familiar with the other until the proprietor of a coffee house I'd been playing at introduced us. We decided to see if we could work together and after a really long setup we rolled a few minutes of music, decided it sounded good, turned on the tape machine and cut three lengthy improvs, which ended up as the album above. We went on to do a number of collaborative shows. I also put together a band with three other non-looping pals (violin, guitar/clarinet, percussion) called Drift. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members neanderpaul Posted January 1, 2012 Members Share Posted January 1, 2012 It really is a different world from delays to loops. Tape delays were available in the 70's. I can't imagine life without digital looping. Yes playing with other people is rewarding. But an army of musicians standing around me saying "how did you want me to play that?" is unimaginably gratifying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted January 1, 2012 Author Members Share Posted January 1, 2012 All my looping efforts were strictly improv -- since I never had any idea what I was going to be doing. So my pals had to be able to figure out what to do on their own, as it went down. I'd actually played with all the people in Drift for years in different circumstances so they already knew I had almost no ability to do the same thing twice... After all, that's what echo boxes are for, right? PS... I was studying the pic of your JamMan with interest since I own a pair of original JamMans that I replaced my Digitech TimeMachine with. Interestingly, at the time, they were nameplated by Lexicon. Not sure how JamMan ended up over at Digitech. The original JamMans had 8 seconds each (you could put in more RAM but it was expensive at the time) and could sync to MIDI and lock it but not much else. Here's an ad for them: http://www.loopers-delight.com/tools/jamman/jamman_ad.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members flummox Posted January 2, 2012 Members Share Posted January 2, 2012 Hey, flummox... sorry I didn't see this earlier. If you've got a work-in-progress that you'd like feedback on, please feel free to start a thread (that way all the feedback/constructive crit is collected in one place) -- or, of course, to post just about anything in these monthly Showcase Threads. "Bright Burning Street" has a very cool feel, I like the intimacy, I liked the classic folkie/raconteur feel. The arrangement really underlines the change of tone around minute four. The solo has a nice elegance but, to be frank, I'm tempted to look at my watch sometime before the end of the roughly six and a half minute song. Now, maybe with the lyrics -- which sounded pretty cool, to be sure -- in front of me, the story and flow of the song clear in mind, I would see that the song needs to be as long as it is... but I can't help but feel, in general, that every bar past the 3 and a half minute mark in pop music must be unambiguously justified. Thanks for your feedback! The structure of the song and the lyrics pretty much dictated the length; but yeah, it needs to somehow be about 4 minutes 30. I can unambiguously justify that by being an old geezer who takes awhile to get going and then just sort of wanders off distractedly. I built a few things into the arrangement to draw the listener in - and I do like way the song develops and builds momentum. When there's time I'll bring it up in Pro Tools and see what I can chop out; that might be a good time to start a thread. The lyrics: I got drunk with a famous folk singer Whose name I had better not say It was back in the 80s in a club in atlanta as we sat there waiting to play Now two Southern men and a bottle can talk shit from now until May With some stripper named Lexus that's spelled with two x's who mostly just got in the way She disappeared in the laughter to search for more suitable mates I don't remember much after But this the folk singer did say: Chorus Some people ain't meant to be outlaws Some folks are just naturally prey They may steal or cheat but they always get beat And deep down, they want it that way Some people ain't meant to be cowboys They just roll along with the fray Now that don't apply to you or to I But we'd better run anyway Well, I lied that I'd been in a gunfight and he lied about vietnam How it rained seven inches in a half-hour in Kansas while he drove to the heroin man I played my set to the crickets He might've burned the place down But I didn't see because that stripper and me had found ourselves commoner ground I awoke on the south side of town To a row of black boots all around there was sunshine and blood on the ground I assumed to be mine Your manager taught you the game And your manager brought you to fame But your manager borrowed your name and he stole every dime Southern men talk about failure like eskimos talk about snow There's some kinds you hide like a dagger inside and some that are mostly for show Some people ain't meant to be outlaws We know not the hour or the day Or who we might meet on that bright burning street where the cowboys and outlaws do play Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.