GUITAR/BASS LOOPING MASTER CLASS

featuring UK solo instrumentalist

Steve Lawson

Sunday January 29th
3:00PM TO 4:30PM
Cost: $20

This workshop is appropriate for any guitarist or bassist who wants to learn how to better utilize a digital looper.

Steve Lawson has beaten a decidedly individual path through the thorny scrubland known as the music industry. He's eschewed a career of simply being the bassist by utilizing a multiple overlaying technique known as looping - Lawson becomes his own backup band. Deeply inspired by guitarist greats like Bill Frissel and Robert Fripp, Lawson uses a digital looper to lay down layers of overdubs in real-time, adding guitar-like lines on the effect-modified upper strings of his six-stringed instrument, as well as using other effects to create lush chordal pads.

There's always a sense of audience in Lawson's playing; always a feel for melody and placement, no straying into pretentious or tedious noodling. Everything is considered carefully as it's played - you can see him thinking, nose wrinkled and fingers hovering as he paints his sonic canvas. Seemingly random sounds are woven into the composition - A jumble of thumps, string-clicks and volume-swells are morphed into a perfectly harmonized orchestration of rhythm, harmony and melody.

It may be a deeply uncommercial move to be so diffuse, but Steve's entire career has been an ongoing experiment at making the music that means something to him, and then using the internet to make that available to like-minded listeners. More than 10 albums into his career, there's a definite 'Steve Lawson' sound: playful yet melancholic, possessed of a naive melodic quality whilst flirting extensively with dissonance and darker timbres to create the soundtrack to whatever happens to be bouncing around in his head at the time.

Space is limited, Reserve Your Seat Now!