Sunday, July 5, 2015

"Colorful" - Getting Schematic for a Multi-Phrase Looper

This is geekness right from the top.  Assumptions are you know what a musical looper does and know some shorthand for chords for songs.  Objective is reviewing a 'schematic' for "Colorful" and how that works for breaking it into phrases.

I'm using a Boss RC-50 looper and it's one ride short of a ghost town but it's still working and permits three independent phrases (i.e. independent chords but the beat can't change).


- - - - - - -  Phrase 1 - - - - - - -

Instrumental intro

A - Asus4 - Dsus4 - D   (x 2)

Verse

A - Asus4 - Dsus4 - D   (x 4)
F - G  (x 2)

Chorus

A - Asus4 - Dsus4 - D
A - Asus2 - Dsus4 - D
A - Asus4 - Dsus4 - D

F - G


- - - - - - - - Phrase 2 - - - - - - -

Instrumental intro (w/full band)

A - Asus4 - Dsus4 - D   (x 2)

Verse

A - Asus4 - Dsus4 - D   (x 4)
F - G  (x 2)

Chorus

A - Asus4 - Dsus4 - D
A - Asus2 - Dsus4 - D
A - Asus4 - Dsus4 - D

F - G


Phrase 2 is identical to Phrase 1 except it will have heavy guitar chords, etc, etc.



- - - - - - - - Phrase 3 (?) - - - - - - -

Guitar break

A - Asus4 - Dsus4 - D   (x 4)

Bridge
F - G  (x 2)


Phrase 3 does not work because it needs to come out of the Bridge into the Chorus and that isn't where the other phrases start.

However ... if the guitar break goes as long as the verse plus instrumental intro (i.e. four or eight more bars) then it would be the same structure as Phrase 2 except for vocal which doesn't come in until the end of the verse before the last chorus.  That works and leaves Phrase 3 open for something else.

Note:  vocal and guitar break / fill are live or might just as well record the whole thing to plastic and walk away from it.


The biggest considerations are first that this can't be done in real time as recording it would require extraordinary patience of an audience and it would murder all hell out of the dynamic of the song.  The other consideration is really an extension of the first:  if real time recording doesn't work then why use a real time device to do it.  In other words, why not make it a back track and record it to disk on the computer.

The reason a back track is not interesting to me is the third phrase is still available for recording live if I restructure the song a wee bit and use Phrase 1 / Phrase 2 as above.  Then Phrase 3 can be used for the A-D sequence and it can loop to infinity to close the song whenever I like.  That's a hazard of a different kind as you can start out being colorful and twenty minutes later you're trying to find Atlantis.  This ain't jazz and probably isn't the time for searching for Atlantis.


A hardware consideration is the DigiTech Vocalist lost some ground in the last experiment as there was some knob-twiddling on the mixer, all of which I'm sure you would be fascinated to read but which we will forego for now, and the summary is this gave some surprising depth to the sound of the vocal.

Note:  as to why I keep discovering 'new' things old hardware will do, there are more than one hundred and fifty knobs on multiple different devices.  The surprise isn't that new things arise but rather that it ever stays the same.


The first possibility of playing in Second Life would be in two weeks when Vandengroef in Amsterdam plays again at Cat's Art MusikCircus.  Van is a great believer in groovulosity and I'm kind of partial to it so that makes a good flow.

The biggest concern is to produce something more than it is to perform as so much time has been lost with the computer busting out and then my back doing a proper job of following it.  Doing "Colorful" quickly percolated up to becoming a Big Deal but that doesn't change anything about the intentions for "The End of the World in Fort Worth" and the difference is they approach the music from opposite directions.  With "Colorful," the music comes and video follows.  With "The End ...," the video story starts and the music follows.

So, nothing's abandoned.  It's all about percolation.

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