Unfortunately, I am a misanthrope. This is unfortunate due to my love of polyphony; I want to hear, and indeed create, layered music. I am in luck, however, because someone, on a day long ago, decided to invent (or perhaps detect) the loop. We can trace looping back to Henry, Varese and Stockhausen. Steve Reich began his career in minimalism purely using tape loops. We find loops across all modern ‘genres’ of music, look at hip-hop and rap for example (a far cry from Reich sonically, but not so much when analysed on paper). Why then are so many of us unfamiliar with loops?
Looping may sound simple. You create a melodic, harmonic or in fact any sequence which you want to be repeated for any length of time (perhaps you’d like to loop until the Big Crunch, if you had batteries which would sustain such a lengthy event) and add another layer, or maybe twenty two, on top. You have now essentially been welcomed to the wondrous world of looping. Yet, there is something missing. Is it really that interesting to loop a chord sequence and play a marimba solo over the top for a few hours? It may be polyphonic (well homophonic to be precise, but I am attempting some form of brevity) but it is simply boring. Even if the sequence in use is G# Major 9th for 3 and half beats followed by D minor/major 7th for 12 and a quarter beats and finished with a G augmented 13th, we will get tired of it after only a few loops. The repetition of basic harmonies then, should tire us after maybe three listens, yet we hear in almost all the electronic and dance genres endless repetition of these harmonic sequences. This is where polyphony comes into play, through the layer.
We can, for example, have a chord sequence of three chords played in a loop. After hearing this twice, we need something to keep our interest, in comes a melody on a Korg Delta. After hearing this twice we need another new idea (we are very greedy as listeners) so a different melody is played on a Casiotone CT-202 over the top of the original, and so on. Using this structure we can create music which does not get boring too quickly and doesn’t lose any momentum. This is the key to interesting dance music; there is some musical pretension without the loss of the direction. You can dance in Area without the fear of the music stopping before you have finished your killer moonwalk and hence not looking wonderfully trendy.
I am terribly sorry if this is sounding like a lengthy rehash, but I had to give some background. Now for the interesting stuff (I hope). Instead of pinning the harmony down and building melodies over the top, what the loop offers, which we don’t get with constant change in music, is the chance to create the harmony through melodies. You can start with a lone melody, maybe just a single note repeated in a clave rhythm, I will choose B. Now, B is present in 6 out of 12 of the Ionian modes starting on the notes of the chromatic scale (we will keep it simple here, no whole tone, diminished or the variations of the minor scale etc.). What key are we in then? Remember, we are oblivious to what the next theme will be, even the next note! Next comes a theme consisting of the tones B, A and D. This has taken away a couple of options for the key, but there are still four possibilities. Another melody enters with the same notes and an additional E. We still have four possibilities. Granted, the harmonies we are creating are bland, but here is the interesting part. The loop is two bars long, and in comes a bass line played on a Yamaha PSR-E403. The bass line however is four bars long. The first half consists of the notes we have mentioned and an additional F# and G#. We now have a key: A Major or F# Minor. The second two bars, however, drop the G sharp to a G natural and suddenly we are in G Major or E Minor. What is fantastic is the dual tonality we have produced but without any awkward modulations, only one changed note in one line.
Looping also allows us to phase shift without the threat of the natural tendency to fall out of sync with the other parts. If you are using a Boss RC-50 and have melody from a Moog Opus 3, you can repeat and loop the melody 2 and a ½ beats later, and only have to play it once! Keep adding layers starting at different times, but the same melody mind, and the texture is incredible. If you are unfamiliar with phase shifting, it is a technique very similar to fugue and round, where the same melody is played on top of itself, but starting at a different place in time.
Yes, looping is a lonely sport, but the texture is incomparable to anything in music. On the downside you will lose out on the input and ideas of others and become, like me, infinitely conceited and narcissistic. However, you only have to cook vegetable goulash for one, and if nothing else at least you can look forward to meals on your own.
