ashdown wrote:i get to spend this entire summer watching everything i've poured my self into over the past year slowly die. its fucking awesome
i do this a lot, on a more compressed time line of 3 to 8 weeks. having a cyclical depression and a secondary cyclical disorder is nice that way.
lately all my playing is concentrated on doing Frippertronics-style loops with the Head Rush and the Flashback, so a lot of what i'm doing doesn't relate to liking/disliking what i play per se, but rather about solving technical questions related to these little episodes i'm composing. how do i build up a backing environment in pieces in the minimum number of loop iterations so each piece isn't nine minutes long? which note should i put in first? what's the most interesting way to add a line, or a chord, or a bass note? what effects for what part? how do i simulate a Steve Reich arrangement in plucked polyrhythms...quarternote and then a triplet on top to start? etc. so that keeps me busy. only about 10-15% of my playing at the moment is "regular playing," much of that soloing over loops a la the Fripp/Eno albums, and i like maybe 1/3 of that if i'm doing well. a lot of the time i'm just testing shit, trying out different scales. i don't expect to sit down and BURN when i practice any more. it's nice when it happens, but that's not what practice is for, really. you don't bring people to life when you practice CPR, either. if i want to be happy, i play bass. i LOVE LOVE LOVE playing bass. just playing a low E or a D on the second string and letting it ring makes me grin. and playing ballads and melodies on the fretless bass makes me happier than the proverbial pig in shit.
but every once in awhile it works. day before yesterday i was working on one of my loops and got a version looping in the background that i really liked, and then played a solo over it through the Sound Shank that said exactly what i wanted to say musically and emotionally...which was intense, because though i started working this episode up before it happened this piece has become associated with the recent death of my favorite aunt and dedicated to her. i was fucking delighted. i was like "yeah, that's why i do this."
be persistent.
meow?
