The endless joy of loops

Two cool videos of people making loops: The first video [10mb QT] is Dosh, who records for Anticon. The video is him playing a bunch of instruments through a looper pedal: "A Rhodes 88 functions as my main voice. I play it with the top off, plucking the low tines with my left hand and hitting the rest of the exposed lines with whatever I have on hand, making beats out of the metallic clicks and garbled, muted low end. Most of the time it sounds good, but if I mess up the timing on the first loop it can really mess up a song. When that happens I just start over."

His clip is slightly reminiscent of Sid Lavrents, but without the Mickey Mouse ears.
The second video [wmv] or [QT] is Kid Beyond, who human beatboxes into Ableton Live to build up whole tracks using just a midi footpedal, a microphone and a Sony laptop. It's pretty amazing. (Thanks, John)

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

The Dosh QT is amazing. It's nice to see that level of skill and creativity combined. I wonder what looper pedal he's using.

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:06 pm

you should check out jamie lidell live. he's been doing this sort of thing for a while but using msp max and routing through loads of synths and stuff. plus he makes ace dirty, glitchy soulful stuff not bad trip hop.

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:14 pm

If I can whore myself out for a minute, I do a one-man looping rock band myself, although mine is all bass guitar. I've got a few (rough) samples at www.fourstringriot.com.

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:00 pm

Not looping, but Kid Beyond reminded me of Fredo Viola

http://homepage.mac.com/chriss/viola/sadsong.mov

# posted by

_aa_ : 4:19 pm

Grew up in Minneapolis and got to see Dosh play a lot. If you ever get a chance to check it out..GO!!!! you would be silly not to....awesome groove and for the geeks you can trip out just watching him play.

Matt

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:13 pm

Son of Dave also uses loops by recording his stomps, creating the beat, and then playing harmonica over it. Quite interesting to see an electronic element put to classic harmonica based blues.

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:32 pm

*cough*frippoff!*cough*

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:17 pm

Well the "Kid" is really good, but he said in the video "it is only my voice", well what is the beat that starts the session?
We don't see him lay down that line...

# posted by

Anonymous : 9:18 pm

I live in Minneapolis and have seen Dosh a few times. He's amazing and a nice guy to chat with too

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:47 pm

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:15 am

My favorite so far of the "loopers" is this video of Jon Brion live. The quality is a little crappy but the song is catchy is all get-out.

http://homepage.mac.com/lsinger9404/iMovieTheater61.html

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:17 am

I like that dosh video.
here's a video of a jamie lidell live performance:

http://www.warprecords.com/jamielidell/jamie_rfh2004_large.mov

# posted by

Anonymous : 6:01 pm

Yay! I love Dosh! He's great, and a nice guy, too. I met him one time I saw Fog in London, but unfortunately missed his solo live performance the night before. When my friend couldn't decide what colour Anticon badge he wanted to buy, Dosh let him have both for the price of one. What a legend. I hope he plays London again sometime soon. I also hope I hear about it prior to the event this time.

# posted by

James : 7:59 pm

What midi foot controller is Kid Beyond using?

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:59 pm

yeah, i wanna know too what foot controller beond is using...

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:53 pm

from the ableton website-kid beyond uses...

" A mic, a PC laptop, an uninterruptible power supply, M-Audio FireWire 410 audio interface, a rugged Ground Control Pro footboard, Roland expression pedal, his tonsils and a mess of cables are all he needs to perform a show."

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:02 pm

"What midi foot controller is Kid Beyond using?"

I believe it is a Behringer FCB1010

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:48 pm

Nah man...it ain't a FCB1010...do a grab and have a closer look...I can't figure out which one it is.

Iomano

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:34 pm

Well the "Kid" is really good, but he said in the video "it is only my voice", well what is the beat that starts the session?
We don't see him lay down that line...

It's just a prerecorded metronome, dude. # posted by Danny : 2:15 AM
******************************

Actually, unless he's done something different for this particular video, he uses his voice to start that first track. He and about 40 other loopers from around the world, including myself, played at the Santa Cruz Y2K4 Looping Festival in 2004, where he explained what he did. He also explains this on the video he does for Live. You have to start looping in Live, unfortunately, with a pre-recorded loop. Hence, he just uses his voice to record that, given he can use it to mimick just about every other percussion device known to man. :)

Krispen Hartung

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:11 am

Nice ideas! Good job. I'm still reading your blog.

# posted by

Anonymous : 1:47 pm

So what was Dosh using to loop?

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:33 pm