Off topic: Fredo Viola is a multimedia artist and singer whose work frequently involves vocal improvisation with delays or loopers. We’ve previously featured his hypnotic vocal looping piece, Wood Smoke.
In this video, Viola doesn’t use electronics compositionally. Instead Viola takes advantage of portable electronics to capture an improvisation in an interesting acoustic space:
After the very last performance of our tour (my very first tour) in Lille I was feeling a little odd, a little mysterious and melancholic. Walking alone through the reverberant stairwell I made some sounds which I liked, so brought out my camera and started to shoot it. Suddenly my friends (the musicians I have been playing with) walked in a floor above me and spontaneously joined me in a vocal improvisation! It was quite exciting and I think there are many really lovely mysterious parts (as well as crazy bits too! hahah)
This is cool. We used to do this in the basement stairwell in the music building at UCSB back in the '70s. A solid concrete stairwell that runs 2 stories and has outrageous natural reverb. Of course there was no Youtube then…. a missed opportunity 🙂
This is cool. We used to do this in the basement stairwell in the music building at UCSB back in the '70s. A solid concrete stairwell that runs 2 stories and has outrageous natural reverb. Of course there was no Youtube then…. a missed opportunity 🙂
Awesome. Me and the guys in my band tend to do this sort of thing frequently as well.