thoughts on music, design and literature

Thursday, September 27, 2007

More Imogen Heap: "Just For Now" Live

Still not out of the woods on my tuberculosis/cold/SARS/bird flu/whatever the heck my cousin gave me.

In the meantime, here's another very impressive bit of work by Imogen Heap.





She's using an Echoplex, or some other live loop player. The way it works is pretty obvious from the video; you record a track, then set where it loops. Then it plays back that track while you add another....and another, etc.

What's great about the way she's doing it, though, is that she still managed to put together a very musical arrangement. So often with this style of loop-based improv it's easy to fall into the trap of just piling layer upon layer of loops, without introducing section breaks or varying the arrangement in any way. She does a great job of keeping it fresh the whole time, and cutting out elements whenever not needed. The "Get me outta here" section at 3:30 is a great introduction of a new idea, as well.

Off to my Tylenol Cold Nighttime-induced haze....

Labels:

2 Comments:

Blogger filch said...

I came across this a couple of days after it was posted and listened to it repeatedly over the course of a few days. I loved the piece before seeing it but watching her put that together was a revelation.

Hope you're well! Kassia says hi.

October 22, 2007 at 10:41 PM

 
Blogger Christopher Tin said...

Hey Chris! Good to hear from you, and thanks for reading my blog. :)

Give my best to Kassia and the rest of the Ringers.

October 24, 2007 at 1:45 AM

 

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home