Looking for the Perfect Loop
Mark J. Butler · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2014
This chapter theorizes musical “technologies,” a term that refers to principles of design affording the kinds of creative actions that characterize improvised performance in EDM. Musical technologies, it is argued, are crucial to the coming unfixed of recordings within a live event. Seven technologies are presented: repeating, cycling, going, grooving, riding, transitioning, and flowing. Of these, repeating receives the most extended treatment. The chapter develops a positive account of repetition as both dynamic and intrinsically temporal. Other themes that emerge include in-time attending; cyclical teleology; groove theory; the continuous, indefinite flow of sound in EDM; and conceptualizations of performance as technologized process. The musical technologies described are shown to facilitate the improvisational interventions that transform recorded sound into dynamic performance.