This academic year, I've been developing my interest in live looping into a creative and personal way that I can make music by myself. I started thinking about the process of live looping by watching musicians like Reggie Watts, Binkbeats, and other independent artists create full-fledged, layered, and complex compositions seemingly from thin air, like some sort of magical musical spectacle. I downloaded Ableton over the holidays and started exploring the software, its unfamiliar interface and seemingly limitless possibilities. I watched a ton of Ableton tutorial videos, replicated some of what I could pick up from this live setup video, and asked some friends for help when I couldn't figure something out on my own. Learning Ableton feels sort of in between learning a new instrument and a computer programming language. The interface isn't totally new if you've used an audio workstation, you just have to get used to a different design. But most of my pre-performance work involves editing clips in Session View, which was a completely new concept for me. Whenever I run into a new problem, I learn about the technology through exploring possible solutions, and even if what I explore isn't useful in that particular situation, it's usually helpful in the future. I haven't been feeling inspired or creative to write my own original music in a long time, long before we were all self-isolating. Instead, I'm listening to music I enjoy, searching for material that I could transcribe and map out and live loop. For now, I am more inspired to learn about the process and the software through attempting to recreate music that I enjoy experiencing. This first song I've ever live looped is a cover of a KAYTRANADA song: 2 The Music. I have a few more covers in mind already, hopefully they don't take as long to develop as this one! Even if they take a long time, I'm enjoying the process of learning and tweaking, and some day soon I'll be able to explain my process and my thoughts clearly to show other people what I've figured out. If you can think of any songs that might be fun to loop, let me know!
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