It's Kaoss, Jim, but not as we know it.....

Since we re-formed Red Square I've been using a pair of Boss PS2 pedals for real-time, live transformation of the horns, a technique I developed in a previous band, the Colins Of Paradise. But I've also had an irrepressible desire to investigate transformational processes more thoroughly.

So I've bought a Korg KP3 Kaoss Pad.

And these are my thoughts, as the KP3 and I, over time, become old friends with a shared wealth of amusing anecdotes and fond memories of the first time I hit the power button............

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Because the Kaoss pad uses new techniques of sound sculpting and introduces a whole new sound-scape into Red Square, I felt the need to find a system, or process, to aid assimilation.

I had an idea of the kind of sound material that I wanted to generate with the KP3, but I needed an 'in', which would allow for an incremental development of knowledge and, eventually, for an intuitive relationship with it's sound control elements, such that I have with those of the horns, the PS2s and Cubase.

I have been interested in the tension that arises between the idea of an improvised music and the elements that are lost or added when that music is recorded. (For example, after a few listenings it is possible to 'predict' what is going to happen next).

I spun this idea round and decided to experiment with adding previously recorded material to live improvisation in the form, initially, of samples of my soprano saxophone extracted from earlier Red Square rehearsals. These would be like 'snapshots' from an earlier time, partially de-contextualised. The samples would be subject to processing, as an old family photograph is transformed by speculation about it's origin and subject matter.
The result, in both instances, is the development of a narrative rooted in the imagination and creativity of the interpreter.

My initial tasks are to find appropriate samples and suitable transforming processes within the KP3, and thereafter to work at developing the intuitive, gestural control of the KP3's various pots, sliders, buttons and touch-pad that I mentioned earlier.

I think that this will mean putting to one side traditional instrumental 'expertise', and starting from the basis that my role is transformational, not generative; that I do not produce the sounds that are heard using traditional instrumental skills at the moment in which they are heard.

I may have taken them and trimmed them to length from earlier rehearsals to which I have listened, and from which I have selected. But once loaded into the KP3 they play, if looped, for eternity.

Initially, therefore, I am obliged to do nothing more than listen.

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An initial thought; looped, the samples have a periodicity absent from the original recordings. How can this periodicity fit into the free flowing interconnections of Red Square improvisations, where rhythm has precedence over metre?

Hmmmmmmm.........

A cliff-hanging page-turner, if ever I saw one.............

.........more, doubtless, to follow........

Jon