Bad loop solo (prototype)

Bad loop solo (prototype)

I had a Weird Creative Idea, and I can't pull it off yet. It's built around this shitbox cowbell loop that's hidden in the menus of the drum set.

I think it's supposed to be some silky 16th note latin thing, but it's janky as fuck, just super sloppy and all over the place. And I got thinking to myself, what if that wasn't a bug? What if that was a feature?

So I'm trying to put together a solo concept built around the idea of honouring the bad loop and treating it as if it's some strange world music rhythm concept with a deep history and cultural significance that I just never encountered yet. Lord knows, there's a fucken ton of those.

The plan is to get inside that jankiness and find a way to feel comfortable in there, let repetition build up a kind of legitimacy so the listener can learn to feel that weird pulse too. And then to snap out of it, and flip back and forth between that and trying to impose a more metrically accurate grid on top of it - which is fucking hard in itself, it's like trying to find a straight path down a curved road, in a sense.

As I say, it's a bit beyond me at the moment, but I feel like it's in reach. I've only played around with it for ten minutes, but I'm weird; I seem to do most of my learning overnight, and I feel like in the next day or two I'll nail it.

It's not the only Weird Creative Idea that popped up tonight, but I haven't had a chance to play with the other one, which is something like setting up a groove with a couple of interesting bits in it, and then trying to get weird with it by chopping that beat up and reassembling the pieces. Kind of like I'm live-remixing my own two-bar groove. I just haven't had a chance to try that yet, I think it'll be a ballbuster too.

But in the name of showing the work, here's the work. And you can't accuse this one of lacking cowbell! ❤️