Interaction and Reaction
Iury Matias de Sousa · Focal Press eBooks · 2023
My first contact with live looping technologies was in 2012, when I acquired equipment built to create and manipulate loops played on an instrument and captured by a microphone. I did some experiments in live solo performances live and with other musicians, always using it as a tool to record harmonies for the songs played, and to improvise over them. In 2014 I got a loop unit (equipment that facilitates live use by having more footswitches), thus allowing greater mobility during the performance. But it was from 2016 onwards that I started using live looping in my own compositions, allowing compositions performed by the ensemble to be synthesized for solo performance, from live recordings, with ostinatos, rhythms and harmonies, to sounds produced by body percussion and onomatopoeia, of looped musical instruments and nature sounds. In this chapter I will talk about my compositions and live looping, highlighting some examples of this relationship, and about how this technology influenced my way of composing, causing the song structures to be built according to the use of loops in the performance, even becoming an essential instrument in my preparation for the different performances in my professional life, either solo or in a group.