I improvised this track with two simple loops:
1) a volume swelled A Lydian scale on my Hideki Nakanishi 
custom Tenor Electric guitar into a 
LP-2 Mini Looper by Looperlative.   I only used stop, start, 1/4 to quadruple speed and Random Retrigger functions
2) a unaffected guitar improvisation over a loop from the first looper 
into a Line 6 M-9 and used a tiny bit of reverb,  stop, start, 1/2 speed double speed, and reverse functions.

I Made Mistakes

Jim Rutledge,  the bass player who I grew up and became a professional musician with;   the strongest grooving' bassist I've ever played with;  a wonderful guy who always was kind and friendly to everyone; who had an infectious sense of humor and was the best team player I've ever had the privilege of performing and recording with has passed away from complications of Delta Variation of Covid 19.
I've been so sad for the last couple of days since I found out and today, this song came out for him.

Please, take this pandemic seriously;  please get vaccinated;  please wear masks until we are out of the woods (which we are not even close to yet)!       Please love the ones you love and give your love creatively and in everything you do.   Life is precious and Life is short.

JIM's SONG   (R.I.P. Jim Rutledge   3-23-52/8-5-21)

The Woodstockhausen Experimental Music Festival was scheduled for 3 days after the planes slammed into the World Trade Center on 9/11/01.
Shocked as everyone was, we hesitantly all decided to go ahead with the festival. We reasoned that the world needed more creativity and not more hatred and violence. 
At the time, I was working on a show that where I used on Translucent Dayglo Green UV Active Plastic objects as sources of found sound music. As I started to load into my car I suddenly realized that I just couldn't do what I had planned to do for my performance and instead, I grabbed a guitar, a lot of objects to prepare it worth, an original Red Digitech Whammy Pedal and my looper. This is the piece of music that I made. I didn't play guitar at that time (I do now) so I was in an incredibly primitive technical space for playing it.
As it later turned out and unbeknownst to me, somebody recorded my performance and put it up on line. Almost two years later, I received and invitation to be featured at an Experimental Guitar Festival in Italy based on the curator's having heard this track. I was to be on the same bill with Adrian Belew and Holger Czukay, with all of my travel expenses to and from Europe covered by my performance fee!  I was pleasantly shocked but I patiently explained that I wasn't actually a guitarist and didn't have a sets worth of guitar music. The curator explained that he knew but he still wanted me to perform.
    This was the impetus for me to both start working on a set of prepared guitar music and I wrote  an email to Loopers Delight saying that I had a seed gig to get me to Europe; wondering whether anyone would want to do a small live looping festival in their hometown and put my wife and I up in a space without cats to perform there. 
    Well, within two weeks, I had my first 2 month tour in Europe and the UK as a found sound/live looping artist just based on that initial email.
With that tour, the  Y2K International Live Looping Festivals expanded to 8 countries, ramped up and truly started being 'international'.
     As fate would have it, the Festivals' main source of funding was pulled from it and the festival was cancelled, so I never got to share the stage with those heroes of mine, but my entire life changed because someone recorded that performance and put it up on line without my knowledge. 

That's pretty magical!!!

For The Victims Of The World Trade Center (Improvisation For Prepared Guitar - September 14th, 2001)

Recorded with a single electric 4 string mandolin and an LP-2 Mini Looper (with sampled violins and subass).      This was created from a  single mono loop (with several layers) recorded in real time whose layers were later deconstructed.    Only single loops were created using double, quadruple, half and quarter speed manipulations in real time.

IF A TREE FALLS IN THE FOREST  (dedicated to Hideki Nakanishi, the MandoMan)

I watched a VICE documentary on the Russian bombing of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv last night.   It was heart rending.
I thought of the US/UK bombing of Dresden in the waning years of 
World War 2,   after it was obvious that the Germans were defeated.
This is such a terrible tragedy

KHARKIV

This is a new tune that I just finished to try and utilize the Afro-Cuban polyrhthmic approach to 
Jazz rhythm.     I don't always have the luxury of playing with lots of trumpets and flutes (as is the case with this arrangement) so I mocked this up just to hear the sound.
I'll probably play it with one flautist and on flugelhornist live at my weekly jazz gig at Hoffman's Patisserie in Santa Cruz, California every Friday night.

It's inspired by our desire for rain here in Northern California and by the beautiful film 'Blade Runner', based on the beautiful speech that the dying Replicant played by Rutger Hauer makes towards the end of the film.

LIKE TEARS In The RAIN 7.0 Fully Orchestrated

I had insomnia tonight and played with vocal samples 
to create this little homage to being unable to sleep.

INSOMNIA acapella

a big storm was predicted for the next several days and I realized that I was experiencing the last warm day of the year.
I always get melancholy when the warmth goes away so I wrote this track.   I only play a Martin tenor guitar on the track.   Even the 'violin-esque' sounds are played with a bow on the Martin.
This track is lovingly dedicated to my brother from another mother,  Daniel Thomas, who has always been inspirational to me as a musician.

LAST WARM DAY Of The YEAR

I just downloaded the WAVES ELECTRIC 200 Wurlitzer 
Electric Piano emulation and through together a quickee 
demo with a snippet from the beautiful SING A SONG OF SONG
by Kenny Garrett.  For years , until today,  I always thought that 
my dear friend Gary Regina had written that tune because it's one 
of my favorite things that he has performed as a headliner at the Y2K International Live Looping Festival.   Today, it came up randomly on my YouTube feed.

my demo of the WAVES ELECTRIC 200 Electric Piano VSTi

The craziness of the world was getting to me today and this just popped out.    I dedicate it to the memory of my dear friend,  Christopher Cohn:  a brilliant and very unusual musician and scholar who passed this week......too soon.
I used Musical Saw and Glass Armonica (the instrument Benjamin Franklin invented composed of tuned crystal wine goblets) as the only instruments and a couple of brand new processing apps that I'm in love with it.      
My only thought is just this:  The is no "Us and Them",  there 
is only "US",  and it's not so hard to make the world a better place for everyone and all living things:   Just be good.  Have compassion.  Have acceptance.   Be generous.   Eschew Judgment.   Be loving.

WHIRLED WORLD - Music For Musical Saw And Glass Armonica

I heard that the mother of a good friend has passed.   It took me back to when my family lost our Mom almost 20 years ago and how hard a time that was,  so I made this song tonight in her honor.

THIS TOO SOON SHALL PASS (for Kathleen)

I was musing on the patent absurdity of the United States suggesting that Canada be added as a 51st state and just had to get funky to shake it all off.

CALIFORNIA, 11th Province of CANADA

I was feeling blue on the night of the Certification and this came out.
Pardon the low recording quality:  it's my Blue lessons mic recording into 
Zoom, right next to my computer fan.............still,  I liked how it came out.

CERTIFICATION Rick Walker

I was so proud that 13% of the entire population of my city showed up to say HANDS OFF to the brazen theft of democracy and the sabotaging 
of our economy and our historic national allies.   8,000 of us showed up!!!!  Yeah Santa Cruz!
I got a beautiful new sample based keyboard VSTi and tonight I created this in the spirit of renewal and resistance!
It's called S.K.Y. Keys if anyone is interested and I"m immediately loving not only the sounds in it, but the ability to morph them in 
fascinating and modern ways as well as the ability to use any sound as a keyboard source in it's engine.   For what it's worth 
it's on sale, really cheap right now.  I have no affiliation with it.  Just a great set of sounds for composing.

HANDS OFF   1st S.K.Y. Keys experiment

Experimenting tonight, exhilirated that millions of Americans stood up for Democracy yesterday..........using some beautiful freeware Patcher preset in FL Studio and experimenting 
with the use Pitch and Grain,  Hammer und Meiszel and BLEAS Tape Op using only 
a 70's drum machine as a sound source..................fun.  I learned so much today about Patcher.

NO KINGS DAY SUCCESS

I'm in last day of Quarantining (my wife contracted Covid though I didn't and she's feeling better already)
and I have a bad case of Cabin Fever.      Do  I played with rhythm a bit.  Hope you enjoy.

END OF QUARANTINE REDUX

One of my favorite memories was playing with a World Beat band called PELE JUJU at the Kerrville Folk Music Festival.  I was so saddened to hear that so many people lost their lives in the flash flooding there today and further dismayed when I heard that the gutting of FEMA was probably responsible for 
people not getting warnings ahead of time of the horrible flash floods that rose up to 30 feet in places, instantly.   I made this lament for those poor souls

OH, KERRVILLE

I was editing my large sample collection of acoustic, electric, synthetic drums and percussion instruments and categorizing Acoustic Bass Drums by timbral quality.   Just for fun I put the first SOFT LARGE ACOUSTIC DRUMS into FLStudio and played an entire bar where each hit was a different kick sample.   I thought the results were really cool sounding at a lower BPM.
Here they are played for four bars and then another four bars of the reverse order.  I love how the artifacts in some samples make the loop much more interesting even though they are NOT bass drum sounds.

16 KICKS in a row  -   an experiment

THERE IS NO US AND THEM,   THERE IS ONLY US

I've been experimenting with using altered techniques on a forced Tenor banjo.  I say 'forced' because I bought a cheap Kay open backed 5 string banjo at the flea market years ago and removed the 5th string so that I could bow both the highest strings and the lowest strings with impunity.    I've tried tuning the drum on the banjo to the fundamental frequency of an open tuning on the instrument:  In this case, I tuned to CGAD.
This allows me, though I only used the bowing technique on this piece, to use hammer dulcimer mallets,  1/4 scale Suzuki violin bows to play the instrument and then I can also sing into the banjo to create string resonances from the head and notes sung vibrating the open chord.
I can also use Middleeastern and Indian finger and hand drumming techniques to play the drum of the banjo........either with the strings muted (dry) or unmuted (resonant chord ensuing).
I'm no accomplished banjo player but cool things can result!
 

CASSIDY

This is an arrangement of the Gnarls' Barkely song, 'Crazy' that I particularly love.
It features beautiful guitar playing by Jesse Elias and bass playing by Thomas Nold.
It's a field recording so not super high fidelity, but I'm proud of the performance.  This tune has become part of our regular repertoire.

CRAZY  Gnarls Barkley   The RICK WALKER Trio  LIVE At Hoffman's

This song was created entirely with a single note sampled from a slightly distorted Fender Telecaster.    All melodic sounds and effects were generated using sample manipulation and digital sound manipulations.     The drums are also made by programming samples.
This was created only using a computer and a mouse.
It is from my 4th Album,  "Purple Hand" which I never promoted as it occurred at the time my father passed away.

CLEAN PHASE    from "Purple Hand"  Rick Walker's Loop.pooL 2nd studio album

I was really missing my friend and musical comrade Jamey Kelly Curtis and stumbled on this track I made the night I heard that she had died after a valiant and long struggle with Cancer.

GONE NOW (For Jayme Kelly Curtis)

This is a found sound instrument:  a very large glass vase that has four curved sides; each with a different pitch.    Water on the interior of the instrument allows 'tuning' of the pitches on the sides and an give up to a 2 octave range.  The opening of the vase, larger than my hand,  can be played like an UDU drum or a Ghatam (a bassy pitch bent sound not unlike the Bayan in a set of Indian Tabla)
This is a live looping performance from a tour I did in Europe in 2003 and is on my 'Translucent Dayglo Lime Green Plastic"  CD from 2003.

LIQUID GLASS GHATAM and INDIGENOUS AMERICAN DRONE FLUTE  Live Looping Performance by Rick Walker

I am a live looping/multi-instrumentalist and audio/visual electronica artist.   I'm also a professional drummer/percussionist/producer 
who also is fascinated by creating lo fi, toy digital video, trailing edge webcam and crap cell phone videos to 'animate' my abstract electronica and live looping compositions.      I've also been heavily involved with designing apps, software and hardware in the both the audio and visual worlds 
of Live Looping.      I founded and produced the  Y2K International Live Looping Festivals in Northern California for the last 11 years and live with my beautiful and talented singer/songwriter wife,  Chris Wedertz in Santa Cruz, California.

Rick Walker

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