eldavojohn's Journal: Music, Modern Technology & Creativity

I don't often find an album that I think I will listen to for the rest of my life.

But the other day, I picked up the album Friend & Foe by the band Menomena (for those of you indie rockers out there, try "air aid" or "boyscout'n" off of Barsuk's site). After I read the wikipedia entry on the band, I noticed a peculiar excerpt, something I previously didn't know about the band:

Digital Looping Recorder

The band uses a computer program called the Digital Looping Recorder, or Deeler for short, in the song writing process - it was programmed by band member Brent Knopf. Drummer Danny Seim explains the process, "First, we set the tempo of the click, which is played through a pair of headphones. We then take turns passing a single mic around the room. One of us will hold the mic in front of an instrument, while another one of us will lay down a short improvised riff over the click track. We usually start with the drums. Once the drums begin looping, we throw on some bass, piano, guitar, bells, sax, or whatever other sort of noisemaker happens to be in the room. Deeler keeps the process democratic, which is the only way we can operate"

Intrigued by this marriage of a computer geek and a band, I read further and found this article detailing the process by which this band records music. They essentially gather all their instruments of noise in a room and lay down a rough drum track. Then they pass around control of that looping scratch track to each other. The whole time, the digital looping recorder (or 'deeler') is running and recording on a computer. They use a democratic process to decide what stays in the loop and they continue to add or remove tracks as they see fit.

When they're done, they have a long song of looped repeating stuff which they then cut out, piece together & rerecord for the sake of quality.

I found this to be a very interesting process and I wonder that if there weren't more cheap set ups like this where young people could acquire cheap equipment and spend hours democratically making music ... could this be a more effective way of harnessing juices? Of all the times I've played bass, I remember playing something good but for the vast majority of those songs, I've long forgotten what it was I've played.

It's obvious that computers & technology has influenced music far beyond what we could have imagined. But this unique procedure of recording and editing one's entire practice is both intriguing and impressive. I don't imply that this will ensure better music but of all practicing habits and writing habits I've heard of, this one by far appears to facilitate the process of people expressing their emotions and ideas through music and lyrics.